Open the book on communication

Stories give space to explore ideas through a third party, enabling difficult topics to be talked about that you wouldn’t necessarily bring up in everyday conversation.

Stories are wonderful vehicles for communicating all sorts of messages. Reading stories with your children can open up worlds of discussion if you’re able to seize the opportunity. By this, I don’t mean quiz your child for story comprehension, make them feel like they’re being interrogated or preparing for a book report!!

Rather, use some questions to start a conversation. It may be a really short conversation before they move onto something else, but that’s ok, at least a door has been opened. Good questions stimulate thinking that your child’s brain will continue to process long after the conversation appears to be over.

What’s your favourite character?

What do you like about this story?

For picture books, you can also ask about their favourite illustration and have a closer look together at the picture.

What would you do if this was you? (reference a particular action or decision of a character)

What could you imagine as a different ending to this story, if you were the author?

What was scary/gross/exciting/unbelievable/good about this story for you? (pick one or two of these adjectives, not a whole bunch! You could also ask this when you’ve finished a chapter, when some significant activity has occurred).

What do you think will happen next? (Dream up a future for the characters beyond the book, or have fun guessing at what will happen next!)

What are the good choices that were made in this story? What do you think are the not so good choices?

Stories give space to explore ideas through a third party, enabling difficult topics to be talked about that you wouldn’t necessarily bring up in every day conversation.

For example, ‘Rat Burger’ by David Walliams has strong themes of bullying, rejection, physical abuse and neglect. All pretty heavy topics, but put together in a delightful story with a strong parallel theme of resilience and redemption. Through reading this book, our family have had good discussions about the importance of kindness and caring in our lives.

Have fun reading together, and don’t close the communication when the book is finished.