Once in a while we try to take our children to a bookstore. We love bookstores. We love what they stand for, we relish the smell of books, and we enjoy the atmosphere that always seems to leave this positive vibe with us throughout the weekend. We don’t visit our bookstores nearly enough, which is probably one of the reasons why small local bookstores go out of business all over the nation–but that’s a different conversation. We sometimes also go to Barnes and Noble where, although the scale may be different, it’s still a bookstore with all the positive aspects that bookstores embody.
My 5-year-old knows that a trip to a bookstore will get him a couple of books for storytime, and that’s his expectation. The other day we went to Barnes and Noble where he ran around the children’s section looking through books and trying to figure out which ones to buy. But this time, right before reaching the children’s section, he noticed the aisles loaded with Legos, games, and other toys. Now for any 5-year-old, a choice between a Lego set and a book is obvious–Legos win hands down every time. For my child, the choice was clear as well; however, he knew that under no circumstances would a trip to the bookstore mean getting a Lego toy.
Any parent knows that books, while being very positive and educational for our kids, need to compete with a lot of other activities in their lives – Legos, iPads, computers, television, etc. And keeping books as a source of entertainment and activity is getting harder than it used to be. Nevertheless, the value of a bedtime story routine is immense, for it not only teaches our kids the discipline of reading, but it also undoubtedly develops a smarter child and a more accomplished adult. Reading should not be done at the expense of Legos or anything else–it should have it’s own part in a child’s life.
What we don’t want is to see is toys in a bookstore, because in the long run these very toys tend to push reading out of a child’s life, leading us to the current statistic where 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year. I wonder if the revenue Barnes and Noble receives from the three aisles of Legos and other toys is worth it in the grand scheme of things.
