By Tom Tracy - Florida Catholic

DEERFIELD BEACH | Though they are children of the smartphone age, the third through fifth-graders gathered in the St. Ambrose School library for a book fair recently were surrounded by real books — and no digital tablets or smart devices.

“I like the books, and at this school we are a non-Kindle and non-iPad device school. We read the books in a paperback and I think a child needs to feel that and not always be swiping,” said Lisa Dodge, St. Ambrose principal, referring to the school’s accelerated reading program.

“That is why we still have a conventional library,” she added. “So the students can pull out a book, read, and they can know where to find a book. Because there are still libraries (around) and we don't want them to go away and for everything to be just electronic.”

Supported in part by the locally-based Joseph and Winifred Amaturo Education Foundation, the recent book fair and the accelerated reader program overall are relatively costly, Dodge noted. The Amaturo Foundation has assisted local Catholic schools with the added costs of encouraging advanced reading.

The Amaturos, of St. John the Baptist Parish in Fort Lauderdale, created both the Amaturo Family Foundation and the Joseph and Winifred Amaturo Education Foundation, through which they support many local charities that serve Catholic programs, education and children in need.

The foundation purchases licenses for the accelerated program for all the schools and provides incentive money schools can use to encourage the children to read, including gift certificates for items at bookstores or funds for pizza and ice cream parties for the younger students who complete their assignments.

“When I was younger we read because we were supposed to read. Now we give the students the opportunity to read what they like, what genre they like, what topic, and they take a comprehension test,” Dodge said, noting that students have to score at least an 85 percent in comprehension.

“That is very doable and they seem to do good at that,” she said. “The neat thing about accelerated program is you read at your level, and the comprehension test puts them at a suggested reading level perhaps just under or over their (real) grade level.

“We can all read, it's a question of what we remember and understand about what’s in the book,” Dodge added.

Scholastic Inc. children’s book author Tommy Greenwald stopped by St. Ambrose April 7 to talk with younger students about reading, writing and specifically about “Crime Biters!,” Greenwald’s illustrated children’s book about a young boy and his crime-fighting dog.

One of his earlier books, “Joe Jackson’s Guide to Not Reading,” was inspired by Greenwald’s experience with his own young children and their disinterest in reading books.

“I became a writer of children’s books for that group of kids who would probably rather get a shot at the doctor’s office or get a cavity filled than to read a book,” Greenwald said. “I became a writer of children’s books because of these three guys,” he said, pointing to a picture of his three sons.

He recalled that as a child he was an avid reader and fell in love with a picture book called “Are You My Mother?”, a 1950s-era children’s book about a baby bird who goes in search of his mother.

“I read that book over and over again and it made me fall in love with reading. And when I had kids I couldn’t wait to pass my love of reading on to them. Did it work? No, it did the opposite, and I had three kids on my hands who didn’t like to read,” he said.

He noted that motivating youngsters to read can be frustrating, challenging and usually involves some sort of minor bribery and reward system. Finding the right book for a particular youngster is one way to help children discover the joy of reading.

Youngsters who don’t like to read are just as awesome, funny, clever, entertaining and great kids as kids who do like to read, Greenwald said — it’s just a matter of forming a habit and choosing the right books.

Dodge said the book fair and author encounter were great opportunities for the students to meet and talk with a real book author whose work many of them had read.

“Children read books all the time but they never get to meet the person who wrote the book and ask questions about where the ideas came from, and so this makes it more real for them,” she said.