Hello!!! Andrew Clover here. It’s a pleasure to be fronting the Ladybird Reading Dads Campaign again, although, I’ve got to be honest… this year I haven’t always read to my daughters. “What?!” You’re thinking. “Didn’t you write, last year, how a nightly read is one of life’s great, snuggly joys? Didn’t you say that promising a book is the only way to bribe them to complete the vast list of bedtime tasks (wash teeth/have last wee/clear up the big pile of pants)?” Yes. I did say all that.
But, for one thing, reading got threatened by the School Literacy Programme. Just say I’d promised them some enticing book and were arranging duvets/pillows/bears ready for The Great Read. Then my wife would appear…“Have you done their reading?” she’d say, and I’d mumble something that rhymes with ‘For Duck’s Sake!’ And we’d pull out another bogey-smeared copy of the adventures of Biff and Kipper…I must have read 20 of those books and I still don’t know which one’s Biff and which one’s Kipper.
“The same thing always happens,” said my 6 year old daughter. “’The magic key started to glow’ blah blah blah.” So we gave up. I’d wanted to instill in them a love of stories, not a love of Literacy Levels. And then suddenly, my tactic paid off. When Grace reached her 7th birthday, she read her first book, Matilda by Roahl Dahl. 320 pages. In two days. She was damn proud of that, and she relished having her own private world to escape to. Since then, she’s read six whole novels.
Also, we had another baby who, last summer, was one year old. Initially, she wasn’t keen on reading. I’d show her a lift-the-flap book. She’d lift the flaps clean off, then suck them. But in the autumn reading became her favourite activity. OK. It wasn’t reading, as such. She wanted one thing and one thing only from a book: that it’d have pictures of animals. Her first words were the cat’s miaow, the duck’s quack, and the lion’s rooooar. Her favourite book was Peek-a-Zoo by Ladybird, which offered jungle animals, flaps and rhymes. We’ve read that well over a 100 times. There were times I didn’t think I was going to get anything new out of it, but she was always optimistic. Now books are her favourite things, and she’ll disappear and read them, solo, for an hour.
I also stopped reading because the older girls started to love audio books, and I started to love having more time to drink wine and watch football. But it felt like a cop out. Many audio books are good, but they don’t offer a lap to sit on. I started reading again. Tonight we read You’re A Bad Man, Mr Gum. They were so amused by the false ending they made me read it again. Then they fetched Mum and made her hear it. It felt good. Also I gave Friday an excellent Irish accent. They didn’t notice, but I enjoyed it.
So the hunger for reading is back on. I’m going out tomorrow to get more books, and I’m going to upload a video of me reading so check back soon to watch it. You can click on the video below. And you can read too, and maybe upload your own video. The best reader wins a family holiday at Alton Towers, which could be fun. But don’t do it for that reason. Read because it exercises their imaginations and emotions and laughter muscles. Read because you get to do quirky accents, you get to do your best storytelling voice, and that is really fun. Read because a book is a good way of bribing them into bed.
Andrew’s book “Dad Rules” comes out in paperback on May 30 2009, three weeks before Father’s Day. It’s had amazing reviews. “I love love LOVED it!” ***** News of the World.
