A SURVEY TODAY found less than half of Irish parents read to their children every day.
The survey by St Michael’s House, which provides services for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, revealed 44% of adults believe they read more as a child than their children do now.
It got us feeling all nostalgic for the days of being tucked up cosy in bed, battling the sleep so we could hear whether Little Red Riding Hood’s granny would be alright or just to laugh at our parents’ funny impressions.
Here are some of the memories that came back to us…
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. I remember it being really soothing and kinda almost musical in how it would be read. The illustrations are really nice and since I loved it so much my mum recommended it to other parents and for each it became one of their favourites.
I had a Ladybird version of Goldilocks and The Three Bears before I even started talking and my mam read it to me every day because I was really into books. The words in it made up some of my first and when I was two my parents managed to convince my cousin I could already read because I had memorised all the pages and murmured things like “too hot” or “just right” as I turned the pages.
Enid Blyton was the one and only in my house and if my parents has guests over I would demand they read me my bedtime story – I think I just liked to mix it up a bit. They had a BBQ one night and I asked for ‘the man with the funny accent’ to read to me. The poor man – from Northern Ireland – gave in to my request and read Goldilocks or something to me. (Sorry I wasn’t a very PC child – in fairness I thought his accent was great!)
I have an abiding memory of this book being read to me as a child:
Absolute nerd alert. Does anybody remember the Childcraft series of books? They were like the World Book but for young kids. We used to get read them. They were nature, science, maths, geography and other fun learning! It also had a Stories one with fairy tales. I think they were mostly Aesop’s Fables. There was also another set of moral tales called Chicken Licken.When we were allowed have fun, we loved the Mr Men and Little Miss books.
My dad did an amazing Gollum impression reading The Hobbit. I can’t believe he was overlooked for the films.
I can’t really remember the specific books from when I was really young, but there was no shortage of Famous Five / Secret Seven / Roald Dahl books in the house after that. My dad always used to ask “Will I read it to you or give you the synopsis?” And that’s how I learned the meaning of the word synopsis.
And this classic was a favourite with one of our staffers:
Your turn – share your memories and preferences in the comments below.
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