Leisure reading is important for personality development and mental growth of children. The main purpose of this study was to investigate leisure reading habits and preferences of young children. A questionnaire was used for data collection and 254 children participated in this study. It was found that the top five leisure-time activities of the children were playing, reading books/comics, watching television, spending time on hobbies, and playing computer games. Mostly mothers, followed by fathers, were encouraging children to read books. The major reasons for leisure reading were to learn new things, improve language skills, and to get better grades in tests and examinations. The majority of the children preferred reading print books and the most popular genres were adventure, mysteries, humor, and animal stories. This paper suggests certain measures to help promote reading among children.

Published in: Canada International Conference on Education, 2017

• Date of Conference: 26-29 June, 2017
• DOI: 10.2053/CICE.2017.0166
• Electronic ISBN: 978-1-908320-83-4
• Conference Location: University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada