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How to Inspire Your Grandchildren to Love Reading
Even if you don’t see them daily, you can help them build strong reading habits and enjoy books for life
4-minute read
Serve up books in creative and even silly ways to foster your grandkids’ love of reading.
Gina Bae
Almost every day, my daughter-in-law shares photos of my 3-year-old and 2-month-old granddaughters. One post earlier this year inspired an especially large smile.
“Making a mess but surrounded by books,” its caption read. My older granddaughter is sitting cross-legged with a large book open on her lap. Her head is tilted down as she scans the page intently. Books have been pulled from their neat stacks and shelves and are haphazardly piled around her. She’s clearly immersed as her brain makes sense of the still-unfamiliar lines and images spread before her on the page.
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Yes! I think. This is exactly the behavior her parents and I hope to inspire. The week before, she’d “read” Goodnight, Moon to me over a FaceTime call, opening up the board book’s pages so I could see as she told me all about the green room, the bears and the moon. A month earlier, she’d cuddled on my lap as I read her one of my favorites, Miss Rumphius, in which the main character travels to remote places, makes friends around the globe and seeks to make her own sliver of the world more beautiful.
Books introduce other countries, other times and other perspectives. They’ve allowed me to envision myself hiking the cloud forests of Ecuador and sipping tea in the genteel drawing rooms of 18th-century England along with the stories' characters. By opening my mind and imagination to such experiences, reading books has made me a more empathetic person. A 2025 meta-analysis found that kids who read storybooks also possess more empathy.
What better gift could I give my grandkids? By reading to them regularly and encouraging their love of books, I hope to help them build lasting connections with others and understand this complex, ever-changing world more deeply.
As a former high school English teacher and college essay coach, I’m also thrilled that a recent University of Cambridge study found that “children who begin reading for pleasure early in life have a better attention span, memory and problem-solving skills,” according to BBC News. That bonus leads to a stronger classroom performance and fewer mental health challenges overall. Kids who read for pleasure tend to sleep more, which can boost health, and they also spend less time on screens.
Here are some ways to inspire and bolster your own grandkids’ reading habits:
Have fun while you read. Kids love to be silly, and most respond favorably to a creative rendition of different characters in any story. (Yes, Papa Bear should sound different from Baby Bear.) Some kids may have difficulty sitting still for a long time, as my granddaughter often does, so let them move while you read. Sometimes I incorporate hand and head gestures or sound-making into a story, hooting as Knight Owl might, or asking them what sounds The Littlest Yak might make.
Author Amy Brecount White says she’s eager to create a book club with her granddaughters.
Courtesy Samantha Joan White
Model reading to them. When you visit, be sure to bring your own book in print or on an e-reader and share what you’re reading. Talk to them about why you picked a certain book and what keeps you hooked. You might even show them that most adult books don’t have pictures, and explain that you can imagine the pictures and the action in your head. If you’re a regular reader of memoirs or history books, as I am, you can share that these types of nonfiction books often do include vintage or archival photos. My granddaughters won’t quite understand why I’m reading a book about the U.S. invasion of Sicily during World War II, but we’re establishing the habit of talking about what we read. I also ask them what they enjoy about certain books or what their favorite illustration is.
Don’t judge. Let your grandkids take the lead in choosing what to read — from board books to picture books to graphic novels — and how often. Repetition can be comforting to kids who are learning thousands of new things each day. Let go of any competitive sense of which books count as “acceptable” or “advanced.”
I’ll continue to bring books to my granddaughters as gifts and be attentive to their interests. Does one like butterflies? I’ll take her to the local library to check out a book about monarch migration or how to encourage butterflies to live in your yard. If they’re taking a trip, look for a storybook that will expand their understanding of their destination. As they age, I’ll also bring and strategically place books about their home that might intrigue them. Most kids react negatively to being forced to read something, but offering them an array of options — biographies, history, fantasy novels — might spark their curiosity and enthusiasm.
Create your own book club. I visit my granddaughters about every other month and am eager to see how my older granddaughter responds to my idea: to create our own book club, meeting in person and on FaceTime. Month by month, we’ll progress from, say, Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse to fun and lyrical poems to … whatever she wants. I hope our reading will someday inspire us to travel together: to Eloise’s fancy NYC digs or to Jane Austen’s Bath. Maybe we’ll visit a tropical island, as Miss Rumphius does. In addition to the favorites I’ve mentioned, this AARP piece has excellent suggestions on how to choose books that may resonate according to your grandkids’ ages and developmental stages.
Above all, have fun with it, as I’m definitely doing!
AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.
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