The holidays are a busy time of the year, and we often forget to do the things that we love the most–like reading. Here are some fun ways to promote reading during these busy weeks. You can send these suggestions home with your students or do this with your own family. You can start anytime, but I find Thanksgiving break through New Year’s Day always works well.
Embrace The Joy of a Read Aloud
Listen to an audiobook on all those drives while you are out working on your holiday to-do list. Or while baking in the kitchen together or while wrapping presents, crafting, etc. You could also have somone in your family read out loud. Someone could be the designated reader, or you could take turns. All of my kids ages 4-15 love listening to books read out loud! You could also have books that you read every holiday. Many years we take turns reading A Christmas Carol out loud. My husband teases me that I always fall asleep, but its really only sometimes and he does have such a soothing reading voice lol, and most importantly it doesn’t change the memory I have of the moments.
Holiday Count Down
You can choose how many days you are going to count down. Wrap a book for each day, and either take turns opening the packages or have enough books for everyone to open their own each night. Many people do this with holiday picture books, but you can also select a book that is the right reading level for the recipient. And no need to break the bank here. You can get used books or library books (assuming you can check them out for the duration of the countdown). My family has a stack of Christmas books that we pull out each year and we buy one new one every year to add to the pile. The kids enjoy unwrapping one each night and they know certain books are certain sizes so they have fun trying to unwrap a desired book or find the new one. I am of the opinion that you are never too old to enjoy a good picture book. Just like the above suggestion, no one is ever too old to listen to someone read a book out loud.
Read the book/Watch the Movie
Read a book together and then watch the movie together. This is one of my family’s favorites. There is always extra motivation to participate when kids know that they get to do a movie night after you finish the book. I do have to tease one of my reluctant readers that they don’t have to listen to me read, but they don’t get to watch the movie with us if they don’t.
Host a Read-A-Thon
Get everyone together for a read-a-thon. We started this tradition a couple of years ago on my birthday. Everyone gets a new book, and we read and eat, read and eat, read and eat. Everyone in the family loves this! Even my reluctant reader looks forward to these events, although it certainly helps that his new book is always a desired graphic novel.
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Remember the words of the song, “there will be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories…” Ask your kids to come up with their own scary story. Then sit around in a cozy setting, maybe with the lights dimmed by the light of a glowing fire (or one on the TV if you don’t have a fireplace). Scary stories are often a great way to appeal to reluctant readers. A couple months ago I was interviewing author M.R. Fournet and she was talking about her experience writing middle grade horror. She talked about how so many kids love a good scary story and that they often invent their own just as scary as anything published authors are coming up with. If they don’t want to write their own there are so many great scary stories out there. I remember sitting around at recess taking turns reading Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark when I was a kid. There was a similar book released this year called The Haunted States of America.
Give the Gift of a Graphic Novel
As much as kids love receiving and reading graphic novels, they also find joy in writing them as well. Suggest that they create a graphic novel of their own and gift it to a sibling, friend or parent. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy. My son has a spiral notebook in which he is always drawing boxes to sketch and write his own graphic novels. You could even print out pages of blank boxes and get a simple inexpensive binding done for them after they create the words and images.
Learn About Other Holidays Through Books
When we think of winter holidays we often think of Christmas and Hanukkah, but there are so many more out there to explore. You could learn about Kwanzaa, Diwali, Chinese New Year, etc. There are fun fiction books, like Let It Glow by Marissa Meyer and Joanne Levy, and there are nonfiction books, like A Kids Book About Diwal by Chhavi Arya Bhargava. You can find more bookish ideas in From the Mixed Up Files blog post Holidays are For Books
Reading Challenges
Many kids love the joy of a challenge or competition. Make a game out of reading and see who can get the most in each category. You could have a winner for each category or 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places for categories done as a large group, like at school. Prizes can be as simple as bragging rights, certificates, little treats, bookmarks, etc.
Tired of sitting on the sidelines while her novelist friends participated in NaNoWriMo each November, kidlit author 
In frustration, I decided to kick Storystorm to the curb. The event was for picture book writers, I rationalized—not for middle-grade authors who wrote entire novels. The challenge was that much harder for us.
Under Pressure
