Getting kids to read a little more
Starting today, there will be book conversations with homegrown poets, digital poetry booths and stand-up comedy in libraries here.
These events are part of over 150 programmes for this year's Read! Fest 2018 by the National Library Board (NLB).
The festival, which runs till July 28, is held annually to encourage Singaporeans to read widely, especially more Singapore literature and books written in their mother tongue.
Besides the festival, NLB has been working to get children hooked again on the written word.
A few months ago, they held the Singapore edition of the annual Kids' Lit Quiz, an international literary competition to encourage children to read far and wide.
One of the recent questions that 10 to 13 year olds had to answer was: Name the book character who said, "Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood."
The answer is not a character from Harry Potter. Instead, it is spoken by Percy Jackson, the titular character in the book Percy Jackson And The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.
To answer this difficult question, the children would have had to read widely and across a variety of genres and authors.
This is beneficial, as experts in child psychology said that the young are not reading enough because they spend their time in the online world.
Clinical psychologist Carol Balhetchet said children prefer to engage their visual senses by watching a video, for instance, instead of reading a book.
INTERACTIVE
She said: "With books, you are engaging yourself more cognitively. But online visuals are more dynamic and interactive, with colours and sensations that seem more exciting and gratifying than reading books."
In NLB's 2016 national reading habits survey among teenagers, only 32 per cent of teens read books more than once a week.
However, 91 per cent of them said they read at least one book in the past year.
Dr Balhetchet said: "Reading is important because it helps the development of language and grammar. It strengthens their ability to form full sentences and explain themselves in depth."
She said that reading also grows the imagination and creativity, by getting children to read between the lines and fill in the details themselves through fantasy.
Principal psychologist of The Therapy Room Geraldine Tan said that children are reading, just not in the same ways as in the past.
She said: "The use of media and devices are dominant in their readings.
"They Google and read articles in a way that is short and fast. They flit from one associated topic to another and have less interest in long readings."
She added that they might prefer to read on the Kindle or their devices instead of paperbacks.
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