How to Dad: Jordan Watson Talks Books

Jordan Watson is better known – to millions of YouTube viewers – as How to Dad, giving hilarious advice on the practicalities of dad-hood to parents all over the world. Today he tells us about the books that were most important to him, growing up, and what he’s reading with his children now.

G’Day,

How to DAD here. Maybe I’m getting too old but I can’t remember exactly what I was reading when I was a kid. I remember the school book bags, bright highlighter green with a velcro top. New books added each week, trying to pretend I knew what the big words meant.

Then at intermediate a friend gave me a GOOSEBUMPS book. This is about the same time GOOSEBUMPS was also a TV show. I thought they were the coolest books in the world. Scary, action, alternative endings! Alternative endings! How before their time were they – crazy! You could read one book that would have about 8 different story options inside.

I think Goosebumps tales also helped mature my creative writing skills. Before them I was still writing about that ‘yum as ice cream’ I had on the weekend. Soon that ‘irresistibly icy, ice cream smothered my tastebuds like… like… burnt eggs on a hot pan.’

Okay, I still had some work to do.

My kids are two and four and not reading themselves. Well the two-year-old snatches the book and pretends to read, then just stands on the book, and the four-year-old likes to point at the words, but we’re not quite there yet.

With the kids we’re reading a lot of number and alphabet books, but each night we have a tale from The Margaret Mahy Treasury. It’s a book compiling 11 stories from the legend herself. The girls know the stories so well that if you stuff up one word they’ll be quick to correct you. A good mix of fantasy tales and more realistic home adventures.

I’m that Dad who gets carried away while reading and when I eventually put the kids to bed I’m always left thinking: maybe I could write a kids book?

Watch this space.