Videogame hooks kid on reading

Here’s something you don’t hear often: Playing videogames can help kids get into reading. It happened to 8th-grader Christopher. He told the Press-Enterprise (in southern Calif.) that there are action games and storyline games, and he found he really liked the latter (he was reading below grade level at the time). One of those, Tales of Symphonia, was recommended to him by a relative, and “quickly discovered if he was going to have any success - if he was going to win this game – ‘I had to read to keep up’,” the Press-Enterprise reports. “He's probably logged 200-plus hours playing - and winning. And he's gone retro. Now, he's reading books” – specifically Brian Jacques' "Redwall" series of eight books and Kathryn Lasky's “owl-populated fantasy series, Guardians of Ga'Hoole." A call to a teacher at Christopher’s school told writer Dan Bernstein that Christopher was not alone in this “Video-to-Book Phenomenon.”