What’s your favorite picture of you as a child? Is it the black-and-white picture of you in 1970s plaid pants, or the ’80s snapshot with you and a big head of hair? (I’m guilty of both.)

I’m not entirely sure what picture of my own children is my favorite, but the leading contender likely is one I snapped several months back, with all three of them—ages 5, 2 and 2—on the couch, each of them looking at a different book.

As a parent, those moments when you see the fruit of your labor are precious, aren’t they? You spend hours and hours teaching them something and think it’s never going to sink in, and then all of a sudden, God gives you a gift that makes it all worthwhile. It’s as if He was telling me, “Keep giving books to your kids.”

Reading, though, isn’t as popular in the U.S. as it once was. The latest data from 2013 shows American teens rank 17^th in the world in reading—a tragic stat because reading forms the core of nearly every other type of learning. Perhaps that failure begins at home: Only one in three parents of children 8 and under read to their kids each night, according to a 2013 survey by Reading is Fundamental and Macy’s.

Looking back on the past few years, I can see what my wife and I did right in raising children who like books—and what we could have done better. Of course, children learn to read at different paces, but even kids who can’t read can enjoy books. Here are seven tips to raising kids who like books: Continue reading →