For young children to learn to take good care of books and treat them well, they need to see good role models in their environment. If a book has torn pages or a damaged cover, or if they see books left on the floor to be stepped on, this reinforces poor habits regarding the care of books. In a busy bustling preschool classroom or home setting with young children, accidents involving books do tend to happen, but I like to make a game of it to help reinforce good book reading habits.
If a book gets a accidental tear, we take it off the book shelf right away and put it in the pile of books for the ‘Book Doctor’. We bring all the books with a tear or a rip or any kind of mishap that is fixable. We set up a ‘Book Doctor Clinic’. I enlist the help of a few of the children to be my helpers in finding the page that is torn, or perhaps helping to hold the loose page in place while we tape or glue it back together again. The children love to help find all the place that need a bit of a fix up, it’s a fun game and it positively reinforces to them that card and paper books need gentle hands and loving care.