We’re great at getting parents and kids through the door for storytime and then their attendance tapers off in the tween/teen years. They’re busy with school, homework, activities and sports that libraries are not always on their radar (unless parents need a place to pawn off kids). If the parents do not value reading and/or allow activities, sports, computing and video games to take precedence over reading, the child is unlikely to value reading.

Parents and children seem to forget (don’t realize) they can seek a librarian’s help for book recommendations, but she cannot help you if you provide little or no information about what you like. We conduct the reference interview to elicit information to help fulfill your request, not because we’re keeping tabs on you This <a href=”http://misadventuresofmonsterlibrary.blogspot.com/2008/08/lazy-parents-please-stand-up-please.html”post from Monster Librarian is a good example of the frustrating parent/child-librarian interactions we often face.

Take your kids to the library, get books/audiobooks, if they don’t like them, go back and get others. Rinse and repeat!