The joys of reading non-fiction. Books that appeal to all ages.

As an adult, what do you read most often? The newspaper? Magazines? MSN on the Internet? The Bible? Rightmove property descriptions? (okay, maybe that one is just me). A lot – if not all- of the reading most adults do is non-fiction. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, my favourite book is called ‘How not to die,’ by Dr Michael Greger and it’s about how to follow a whole-food, plant based diet, exciting or what?! So why do we insist on giving our children a narrow diet of fiction when there is a rich menu of non-fiction out there simply waiting to be devoured.

The wonderful thing about non-fiction is that the same book can appeal to children of different ages. For my son’s 3^rd birthday, I bought him a wonderful book about the human body, with brightly coloured pictures and 70 flaps to look behind. It uses exact scientific terminology and tells us everything we need to know from what makes our hair curly to how many baby teeth we have. Yesterday, I found my 18 year old (soon to be off to University) son reading it. And he was having a thoroughly lovely time.

Still not convinced? Here are my top three reasons for introducing more non-fiction into your children’s lives:

·         Vocabulary development – the more words you read, the more words you know.

·         General knowledge- useful in a pub quiz in later life too!

·         As a springboard for writing- find a topic you’re interested in, research it. Write a newspaper report about it, write a report, write a story based in that tropical setting/ the digestive system. The possibilities are as endless as your imagination.

Not sure where to start? Wide Eyed Books- have lots of lovely titles, our current favourite is the ‘Atlas of Adventures.’ They also have their ‘lift the flaps’ books that are full of really technical information, we like ‘Planet Earth,’ and the ‘Human Body.’ Each book is richly illustrated and fascinating to look at, whether you are 3 or 18… just ask my kids.

Happy reading folks 😊