Mireille Silcoff loves to read. Her 12-year-old-daughter does not. In a New York Times essay, Silcoff writes that after many failed efforts to convince her "whip-smart" daughter to pick up a book, she resorted to flat-out bribery—and it worked. So much so that she is encouraging other parents in her situation to try bribery, too. Silcoff's daughter accepted an offer of $100 to read a book, and Silcoff chose Jenny Han's The Summer I Turned Pretty, which had been turned into a streaming series her daughter had loved. The deal was that her daughter had to finish the book in a month, but it took only a week. Then her daughter asked for the sequel and finished that "at no extra charge."
Silcoff understands that young people consume stories differently these days, but books offer something unique in her view. "You know when an author sums up a feeling you didn't even know you've had, and a hundred lightbulbs go off on the top of your head in a kind of epiphany?" she writes. "I wanted her to have a chance at feeling that." Books, she adds, make readers fill out a story in ways that a TV series cannot. They "leave space for blanks—and for the internal invention they can inspire." So did she turn her daughter into a reader? Time will tell. The only thing Silcoff knows for sure is that "we finally opened a new portal for her to the printed page: a quiet personal place that I imagine—I hope—will serve her for a lifetime. That feels like the best money I ever spent." (Read the full essay.)
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