DEBORAH CROMBIE: Back in August, I happened across this piece in my local newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, by the author Christopher de Vinck. (Hopefully the DMS will allow one article behind the paywall!) It was a celebration of the life of New Jersey journalist, and later educator, Jim Trelease.
In 1982, a year before my daughter was born, Jim published a little book called THE READ ALOUD HANDBOOK. While working for the Springfield Daily News, Jim volunteered to visit local classrooms to talk to students about journalism and art. Jim noticed that the children who read for pleasure came from classrooms where teachers read aloud daily. When he began to research, he discovered that children who were read aloud to also had bigger vocabularies and did better academically.
Sharing the benefits of reading aloud became Jim's life mission. THE READ ALOUD HANDBOOK spent 17 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. It is now in its 8th edition, with an updated treasury of book recommendations. (Ordering a copy for my daughter now!)
If I hadn't already been motivated to read to my daughter, this book would have convinced me! And of course children who are read to read to their own children, as my daughter has to my granddaughter.
It's odd but I don't remember either of my parents reading to me. But my grandmother, who lived with us and had been a teacher, did, and I'm sure that had a lot to do with my having been an early reader and developing a lifelong love of books.
The defining memory of my grade school years was my sixth grade teacher reading A WRINKLE IN TIME aloud to us. I could not wait for the end of the day and that day's chapter!
Now, I put myself to sleep every night listening to audio books, and I'm not the only one!
Michael Buble falls asleep to Matthew McConaughey every night! There is something so enormously comforting about being read to, and I think we process stories and language in a different way. We shouldn't give up being read to just because we're grown up. (And, of course we have Hank and Hannah to read to us twice weekly with their fabulous First Chapter Fun!)
My fictional characters carry on the tradition, as you can see in this little snippet from A KILLING OF INNOCENTS:
After
supper, Kincaid had overseen baths while Gemma did the washing up. Then he’d
read a chapter of The Wind in the Willows
to Charlotte and Toby. His mother had recently sent him the copy he and Juliet
had read as children, with its original Ernest Shepard illustrations.
Kit, who
was supposed to be studying, had come in quietly, removing his earbuds as he
folded himself into a seat on the floor just inside Charlotte’s doorway.
“Mum read it to me,” Kit said afterwards, when the younger children were tucked up in their beds and just he and Kincaid stood in the hallway between the bedrooms. “I remember thinking that it had been written just for me, that it was my river, and that if I just looked hard enough I’d see Rat or Mole or Toad.”
REDs and readers, who read to you? Did it spark your love of reading? Do you have memories of particular books?
