Reading aloud to your child increases his vocabulary, expands his knowledge, improves his listening skills, stimulates his imagination, sharpens his observation skills, promotes self-confidence, and builds problem-solving skills. It also allows him to enjoy and appreciate literature that is too challenging for him to read himself.

Find a regular time and place for reading every day. Choose a time when you and your child are relaxed, such as before bedtime, and read for as long as he is interested. Before you begin, make sure he is settled and ready to focus.

Vary your tone and pace, and make reading enjoyable by using different voices and expressing the emotions in the text. Create suspense and anticipation, while giving your child time to absorb the content and pore over the illustrations by reading at a slow speed.

Children often look like they are distracted when they really are paying attention. Fidgeting and squirming doesn't necessarily mean your child isn't listening. If you have trouble getting a very young child to sit still through a book, try reading to him in the tub.

Ask questions to make sure he stays interested and engaged. Check to see if he remembers the order of events. Get him to tell you, in his own words, what he thinks the book is about. Ask what he thinks will happen to the main characters at various points in the story.

Encourage your child to follow the text on the page as you read to him. Pointing to the words as you read helps him learn how to pronounce difficult ones.

Help your child discover the meanings of words he hasn't seen before, and make sure he feels comfortable asking questions about the story. Encourage interruptions and respond to his insights with comments like, "Good thinking!"

Ask your child more "why" than "what" questions, such as, "Why do you think the character made that choice? Why do you think the story ended that way?" Analytical questions help your child become a better thinker.

Encourage your child to tell you his own stories, and challenge him to come up with alternative endings to the stories you read together.

At several key points throughout the story, ask your child to predict what will happen next anddiscuss whether the events in the story could really happen.

Discuss any moral of the story, as this gives you a chance to subtly impart your values and ethics.

Reread your child's favorites again and again. Relate incidents in the book to occurrences in your child's life.

Never take away reading time as a punishment for your child. Instead, offer extra story time as a treat he can earn.

Don't stop reading aloud together once your child begins school. Research shows that children whose parents continue reading to them and listening to them read become more competent readers.

Some intriguing questions to ask your older child when reading aloud:

Do you find the characters interesting and believable? Do you relate to any one in particular?

Where does this story take place? Is the book set in the past, present, or future? What season is it?

What distinguishes the characters from one another? Which characters are the main ones and which are supporting?

Teach your child to identify the basic story line as well as the characters, their relationships, the roles they play, what they should or need to do, their personalities, unique identifying traits, personal obstacles to overcome, what is at stake, how a character changes, what he learns, how we learn about the characters' major conflicts, points of view, and what we know as readers that the characters don't.

Also point out how information is conveyed in a book including description, narration, symbols, metaphors, irony, allegory, parable, sentence structure, vocabulary, contrasts, and parallels.