Intro
January 8, 2005
Reading books like
Raising a Reader, by Jennie
Nash,
Raisin' Brains,
by Karen L. J. Isaacson, and
The Child That Books Built, by Francis
Spufford (which I'm currently reading) have made me want to talk about my
own experiences reading to children, teaching kids to read, and how they
remind me of the wonders of a childhood spent reading.
You can think of my contributions on this subject as essays or, in more
modern terms, blogging. I'll give you musings about children and books.
I'll add a little bit each time I post an issue of Sonderbooks.
Why do I feel qualified to talk on this subject? It's not formal
training. I do work at a library, but I only took one "Children's
Literature" class in college. I do have two sons of my own, and I
did read to them (and still read to the ten-year-old), and did successfully
help them become people who love to read.
My experience with my sons is probably where I gave the process the most
attention. However, I also have the experience of reading to several
other children and guiding them as they learned to read. I am the
third of thirteen children. Most of us were reading well before we
reached Kindergarten age. My mother deserves all the credit for teaching
us older ones, but when it got around to numbers seven and eight and following,
you can only imagine the delight of a preadolescent girl watching the light
come on as those letters formed themselves into words in my little brothers'
brains. I've seen kids learn to read. I've read to kids. There
are few delights equal to showing children how magical books can be.
Reading to kids is cuddly. Reading to kids can be silly, scary, funny,
playful, magical or musical. As a big sister, I especially enjoyed
Dr. Seuss and the challenge of trying to read
Fox in Sox as fast as
possible and still have it make sense. Okay, I enjoyed that as an adult,
too.
What better excuse can there be for transporting yourself back to the wonder
of childhood than reading to a kid? What joy is greater than sharing
the books you loved with your own children and watching their faces as they
experience the adventure along with you?
Starting Out
Partly I'm thinking about reading to kids because my co-worker complained
that her little nephew's parents don't read to him. They've told her
to stop sending him books because he "doesn't like them"! This little
guy is only fifteen months old.
You can't expect a fifteen-month-old to know what a book is all about.
Our oldest son's favorite activity as a crawling baby was to rip paper.
We had to turn all the books on our lower shelves around backwards
so that he couldn't rip a strip off the covers down the center of the spines.
There weren't so many board books out then (or at least we didn't
have many), so we didn't let him near books until he was about a year old.
However, once he stopped ripping and eating them, he quickly came
to learn that books meant cozy time with Mom and Dad.
We let him turn the pages, and he turned them much more quickly than we
wanted him to. The key to that stage was books with only a few words
per page. We had a favorite called
My Dad Is Brilliant, by Nick
Butterworth. It had one phrase per page, with a picture of the magnificent
father. Lines went like this: "My Dad is brilliant." [page
turn] "He's as strong as a gorilla." [page turn] "He can sing
like a pop star." [page turn] And so on.
My Dad Is Brilliant was the first book that little Josh memorized.
I'd read the first part of the sentence: "My Dad is. . . " and
Josh would chime in with his sweet little voice, "Bree-yant!" "He's
as strong as a. . . " "Go-wee-ya!" Along the way, he learned
that books have words that are the same every time and that it was worth
listening before you turned the page. He learned to be a little more
patient to hear what this book had to say. But he never would have
learned if we hadn't taken the time to sit down and read to him. And
trying to read books to him with paragraphs of text on each page was still
an adventure for a future time.
My husband reminds me that besides the rule of "a few words per page," another
important rule in choosing books for a toddler is: "A kid asleep at
the end"! If reading time makes the child sleepy, that book is a gem
indeed!
Copyright © 2005 Sondra Eklund.
All rights reserved.
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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund