Family reading doesn't have to end with 'Goodnight Moon'

Rachel Lu reads to her five boys every night at bedtime, even though the oldest is now 16, she writes. It's a family ritual she plans to continue until the youngest, who's seven, goes off to college.

She starts with picture books and kids' books for the youngest, while the older brothers are finishing their homework, then reads a more adult book to the older boys. (They all sleep in the same room.

"I get to share all my favorite books with them, passing on the stories and ideas that have shaped me," writes Lu, an associate editor at Law & Liberty. "At the same time, through the conversations that naturally arise in this setting, I get a sense of what they’re thinking about, too."

She answers questions on "books that would be too difficult for them to read alone," so they "learn the background knowledge and habits of mind they need to be independent readers."

If she's away at a conference, she reads to the boys over Zoom.

"They love high-flown adventure, but also military history," writes Lu. "We’ve read political novels like 1984, but also Jane Austen and Ramona Quimby. We’ve read Plato, but also Dave Barry." Sometimes she'll read a speech, a favorite poem or the Bible.

Family discussions are richer, she writes, because there are "things that we all know because we read them together."

I stopped reading aloud to my daughter fairly early, because she was a very early reader. But I'd always read what she was reading, so we could discuss it. Both of us are practical people. I used to say that if we were in charge of literature every book would be very short because the main character would do the sensible thing in the first chapter and there'd be no need for a second chapter.

My daughter is now a literary agent.

By the way, I'm rereading Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair, the first in a series about literary detective Thursday Next. It's weird and wonderful. I also recommend his nursery crime series, which starts with The Big Over Easy. Inspector Jack Spratt investigates the death of Humpty Dumpty. Did he fall or was he pushed?