“My child doesn’t read.” If this sentence gives your heart a little tug, take a breath: a love for reading is neither a gift from heaven nor a genetic lottery. It is a flame that is lit—sometimes late, sometimes along an unexpected path—and that can be nurtured without ever being forced. Here are seven simple ideas, practiced by parents for generations, which all share the same principle: you don't push a child toward books, you make books irresistible.
1. Read in front of them (the most underestimated secret weapon)
Children don’t listen to our lectures: they photograph our actions. A parent who keeps repeating “you must read!” with a phone in their hand sends a scrambled message. A parent curled up on the sofa with a novel, absorbed, smiling to themselves at the page, sends a crystal-clear message: reading is an adult pleasure, a grown-up thing, something I can’t wait to do. And anything that is a “grown-up thing” fascinates a child. You don’t have to say anything—just be seen reading, regularly. It’s disarmingly simple, and formidably effective.
2. Let them choose (yes, even the comic book, even the book that is “too easy”)
The library or the bookstore is their hunting ground, not yours. If they choose a comic book, a documentary about sharks, the same picture book for the twelfth time, or a book you think is too easy: perfect. A child who chooses their book reads a chosen book—and that is the whole difference between forced reading and desired reading. “Easy” reading builds fluency and confidence; comics build a love of stories. The level will increase on its own, later, driven by desire. Your only role: stock the hunting ground and marvel at their catch.
3. Read aloud—even to older children who can already read
Many parents stop reading at bedtime as soon as the child learns to decode words, as if taking the training wheels off a bike. It’s a shame, because that is often where the magic works best. An eight, nine, or ten-year-old still decodes slowly: on their own, they don’t have access to stories at the level of their imagination. Read aloud by you, they do. You offer them stories that are richer than what they can read alone, and you show them the reward that awaits them at the end of the effort of reading. Continue as long as they ask for more—some parents read aloud to middle schoolers, and those are truly beautiful moments.
4. Establish a bedtime reading ritual
The brain loves rituals, and children even more so. Ten minutes of reading every evening, at a set time, in bed, with soft lighting: very quickly, this moment becomes a milestone as anticipated as a hug. The clever parents’ trick: stop in the middle of a thrilling chapter. “The rest tomorrow!” The next day, you won’t be the one suggesting reading—the child will be the one demanding it. And a child who demands their bedtime reading has already, without knowing it, caught the reading bug.
5. Put books everywhere in the house
We read what we have on hand. A basket of books in the bathroom (don’t laugh: it works), a stack on the coffee table, a few picture books in the car, a small shelf at their height in their bedroom—at their height, that’s important: a book you can grab yourself is a book you will open. The idea isn’t to have a palace library, but to make books a banal object of everyday life, as accessible as a toy. Idle moments—waiting, the boredom of a rainy Sunday—then become opportunities for reading, naturally.
6. Never force them to finish a book
Here is a rule that adults readily agree upon and strangely deny to children: the right to abandon a boring book. Do you yourself finish every novel you start? A child forced to finish a book that bores them learns that reading is a tunnel you can’t get out of. A child authorized to put down a book and open another learns that reading is a buffet to help yourself from. The first will be wary of the next book; the second will give it a chance. Abandoning a book is not a failure: it is an act of a reader.
7. Connect reading to their passions
A child crazy about dinosaurs will read a documentary about dinosaurs that they never would have “worked on” otherwise. A horse enthusiast will devour novels about riding. A football fan will read stories about locker rooms and last-minute goals. Passion is the perfect Trojan horse: the child thinks they are feeding their passion, and it is reading that takes root. Observe what makes them tick right now—even if it seems futile to you—and find the book that responds to it. The subject of the book doesn't matter; the appetite it creates does.
And for beginners: a word on the syllabic method
Everything above assumes one thing: that decoding is not a source of suffering. Because a child for whom every word is a mountain cannot love reading, simply put—the effort devours the pleasure. That is why the first years are so important, and that is where the good old syllabic method works wonders: the B and the A that make BA, clear steps, syllables that fit together like bricks, and that immense pride of the first word read all by themselves. It is this spirit—patient, progressive, solid like the textbooks of yesteryear—that we wanted to rediscover in our Collection de l’Écolier, designed to give beginners foundations so secure that reading quickly becomes a game rather than an obstacle.
A final word: sow, water, and let grow
You will notice that none of these seven ideas contain the words “force,” “impose,” or “demand.” This is no coincidence: the desire to read cannot be commanded, it must be cultivated. Read in front of them, let them choose, tell them stories at night, sow books everywhere, respect their abandonments and their passions—then let time do its work. One day, you will surprise them with a flashlight under the covers, and you will pretend to see nothing. That day, you’ve won. And if you are looking for something to stock the shelf, our catalog covers all the steps of the journey, from the first syllables to the Baccalaureate.