The Reading Room

Hi Laurie,

Thank you so much for your question and I'm so glad you have noticed where your brothers weakness in reading is - this is the first step to helping him enjoy books!

I would maybe suggest trying to start him reading some books that are slightly below his age range to get used to the text and maybe some of the words he is not confident with.

There are some great books around for the more relcutant readers such as, Anthony McGowan's The Bear Bum Gang. These books are aged 7 years and above but it will start him on the right track and provide him with the confidence he needs to continue reading.

I would maybe suggest a couple of ways to make the whole idea of sitting and reading a book a bit more fun for him aswell. A couple of ideas I can think of would be to maybe purchase a funny book such as, How Loud Can You Burp! by Glenn Murphy - This is a very funny book with interesting facts aswell as a humorous side!

Or get him involved a bit more by getting him to write a short story, it can be about abosolutely anything and can be funny, serious, or a story about a friend or family member, this way he will get to understand the words he is using.

I hope this helps!

Please keep in touch and let us know how your brother is improving with his reading!

Hi Aisling,

It's funny you ask about books to do with the environment, because here at Red House this month we've gone very green and really pushing to raise awareness about protecting the environment, so I think I might have just the thing for your friends.

There's a great book out on the sight at the moment called You Can Save the Planet by Rich Hough. This is a fully-illustrated and fact-packed guide that reveals the impact of everyday life on the environment and how to change simple elements of our lives to help protect the future of our planet. It's an amazing read and really inspiring.

I hope this helps!

The Red House Editor