When our hearts are tangled up, ragged and forlorn, weary with too much study, or we just want a good day outdoors or a break to get outside, reading is the ticket. When the day is sunny and warm, or when it’s brisk and windy, being outdoors, with a book, is the best way to spend the day or afternoon. Let the breeze and a hammock’s sway do its work on a page of captivating adventure. Let falling acorns and the cry of a hawk take our troubles off our hearts and on to more.

Your kids could paddle a boat or kayak into a calm pond and pick up reading in their favorite chapter book. They could read inside their forts tucked safe in the woods. They could sit on your apartment balcony, by the stream at your local park, or walking into a nearby field to read. Bring books to the pool in the summer. Bring books to read while you rest after a hike at a trail. Bring books to the playground or to your picnic. 

Many happy hours have passed in reading outdoors. The element of the outside adds so much to the pages of a book. Grasshoppers and crickets chirping, squirrels running, song birds singing, leaves falling. Immersing yourself in nature is such a rebellion against today’s screen-heavy, artificial and indoor lifestyle. The outdoors is more real, more healthy stimulating than inside our four walls can provide. I believe getting outside in a good book imprints such fond memories of story and surroundings as you read as well, that the stories live on in deeper ways and understanding. We so fondly remember reading some great animal picture books on a blanket in our yard year after year. 

When you’re reading outdoors, you’re able to have full sensory immersion in a way that renews your mind and senses to de-stress, slow down, and soak up everything around you. You’ve read your kids the fall picture books before. But have you read them outdoors under a massive, gorgeous oak tree? Your son has read tales of heroes and challenge before, but has he read them in his own fort he made with a hatchet and beside a fire he built? It’s a magical uniting of word and world. 

All that’s required is books and the outdoors. Picture books, chapter books, study books, non-fiction books, fantasy books. Bring a backpack or tote bag of books, or just one you’re really working on. Go straight from the library to the park to read, or just walk out into your backyard or apartment balcony. Maybe you have twenty minutes; maybe you have a few hours set aside. Maybe you’ll be reading to the kids; maybe they’ll be out reading on their own. Sometimes it’s a great mix of both; I read to the boys, then they take off, hang their hammocks, and read their own books as well, with a few battles in between of stick fighting.

You may take your time, and read at your leisure, filling up your book record as you can, as you go. You might set a deadline and aim to read ten or twenty-five books by the end of a month and have a friendly contest within the family, or within your friends’ club. 

So as summer heats up and the sun is bright, you’re reading at the pool or in a hammock in the shade of trees. As the spring dawns and flowers bloom and trees bud, you’re reading on a blanket in the grass. As fall leaves drop, you’re reading by the leaf pile with occasional breaks for jumping in, of course. When winter chills over, you’re reading by the fire pit outside, hot cocoa in hand. Every season, every book, even the familiar favorites, become a new adventure. 

I believe the outdoor reading club is especially beneficial for boys, as it allows full energy to run off as needed. Finished a chapter? Run around the house once! Read one picture book? Jump up and down or up the hill and down the hill. You can’t go wrong with fresh air, room to breathe, and good books. It just doesn’t get any better than that. This is learning to love to read. This is learning to love to be outdoors and in the element of the world around us, not a stranger to it as a foreign indoor-dweller. This is embracing the pursuit of healthy living by fresh air and outdoor time, and learning and improving important reading skills. You can’t lose.