The enchanting stories of Harry Potter are a good way of instilling reading habits in children, writes Bina Shah

      If you have children, or indeed, if you have at all been in touch with the world in the past six months, you will know that the biggest children’s movie to hit the screens this year is Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone, the film adaptation of J.K. Rowling's award-winning children’s book. No doubt in the next few days your children will bring home this film on a pirated video and spend two hours lost in the world of magic and wizardry. Do not be surprised to hear, then that this is the perfect time to interest your child in reading a book.
      In a time when so many children's is lives are immersed in video games, surfing the internet, and watching hours of television, it may seem almost impossible to get them interested in the written word. You may have tried before, only to be met with cries of protest and assurance that people only read books back in the age of the dinosaur. Or you may not have read a book to your child since the time he or she was reading Dr Seuss and singing nursery rhymes. Either way, it's clear that the world of reading for pleasure has not been given too much priority, especially in a country like ours.
That is why the film release of Harry Potter is the perfect opportunity for you to get your child interested in reading for fun. For those of you unfamiliar with Harry Potter, he is a prepubescent English kid who happens to have a fantastic secret --- he is a wizard. Orphaned Next>