Looking for a way to motivate your struggling reader? Check out these books for kids who don’t like to read.
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My second born is full of energy and loves to do things. When she was younger, she much preferred to ride her bike or clean out a closet than to read. I didn’t mind her doing all the active things she loved, but I knew she needed to love reading as well. Reading is so important to academic success and to life success in general.
So, I made teaching reading a priority. More specifically, I wanted to teach her to love reading so that she would be a lifelong learner. I worked hard on teaching her phonics and got her to the point that she could read simple books.
But, she still wasn’t truly motivated to read. I knew I needed to find some books that would help her to want to read. She needed to see that books can be very entertaining. After some trial and error, I found books that she would read with little to no prompting from me.
The books I have listed below are some of the first books that she read because she just wanted to read them!
The first time I found her reading by herself was a very proud mama moment for me.
What Do You Do If Your Child Doesn’t Want to Read?
- One of the best ways to encourage your child to read is to read to them! You can read books that are at a much higher reading level than your child, and are usually more entertaining. This helps them to understand that books are fun!
- Read books that encourage hands on learning. Think outside the box-one thing that motivated my daughter to read was hands on books-like science experiment books. She could read and then do-which was very fun for her.
- Find books with super interesting illustrations. Alot of the books I recommend below have very intriguing layouts and/or illustrations.
- Find a subject that captivates them. For my daughter that was animals. For yours it might be airplanes or tea parties.
Best Books for Reluctant Readers
Frog and Toad books
These books have such cute stories, and are high interest books for younger kids. Plus most kids love stories about animals! Animals are definitely one of my daughter’s favorite subjects!
The Day the Crayons Quit
This book is so entertaining-even my teenager and I couldn’t help but listen! From the description-“All Duncan wants to do is color, but when he opens up his box of crayons all he finds are letters saying the same thing: His crayons have had enough! They quit!” These crayons have personality. 🙂
The Berenstain Bears: Kindness Counts
Berenstain bears-These books have great values and teach morals in an entertaining way. My reluctant reader read a bunch of them!
The Picture Bible
The Picture Bible is an easy to read comic book type Bible. I think that having a comic book type format encourages kids to read because they want to find out what the pictures are about. We have an old copy of this Bible (I read it as a kid!). Now my daughter is enjoying reading it.
Frogs (First Discovery Books)
First Discovery Books have really neat see through pages and awesome illustrations. There are not too many words on each page-a big plus for a struggling reader. My daughter loved this First Discovery Book on Frogs.
My First Mind Blowing Science Kit
Another way to motivate struggling readers is to give them something to do. I noticed my daughter would read without any prompting from me if she was learning to do a project or an experiment. Science Kits can motivate hands on learners to read. My daughter was highly motivated to do the science kit she got for Christmas. Even though she wasn’t interested in many books at the time, she would read her science kit instructions!
The Great Undersea Search by Usborne
My daughter has also greatly enjoyed the Usborne Great Searches books. She is motivated to read the small captions so she can learn more about the animals, and to find out how many of that animal she needs to search for. Again, she is motivated to read so she can “do” something. In this case, it is finding hidden animals! 🙂
Smart Sweets Cookbook
Another idea for kids who like to do things is to let them cook something with a recipe. Getting to cook and being able to eat the results are great motivations for reading the recipe. Here is a Smart Sweets cookbook from one of my favorite cookbook authors. It has healthier versions of desserts-(my daughters are more likely to cook if they get to eat desserts!)
I bet you will find some of these books will help your kids to love reading too!
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The picture Bible definitely has helped my kids! They love it. 🙂 Great list!
That is awesome that your kids enjoy the Picture Bible!