Read-Alouds

A momentous day for our family arrived a few months ago: the day I decided to start reading aloud chapter books with the kids, and not just picture books. I had been dreaming about that day for a long time. If you have books that are special favorites from your childhood, maybe you know what I mean. I couldn't wait for the day their attention spans and memories were developed enough to handle a story spread out of many days. Reading some of my favorite children's classics with them has been such a treat, and I'm trying to savor every moment.

When I say I'm reading aloud to "the kids", I mostly mean to Darling (who is now 5). Doodlebug (3) is always included, but she gets up to play, then comes back to listen to what she finds interesting, then moves back to her baby dolls and so on. As long as she's in the room, I think that's fine. Sometimes Pumpkin (not yet 2) is present for the chapter read-alouds, and sometimes he has already gone to bed. He gets his own special reading time with Mommy, separate from his sisters' reading time, as part of his nighttime routine. I'll combine the reading time when he is older.

Reading time has always been a fixture in our bedtime routine, often getting stretched out from our usual thirty minutes to nearly two hours. We always read before bed, but I am thinking about adding a second reading time, maybe after lunch. What does your read-aloud time look like? I would love suggestions. I have tried to surround my kids with books from the very beginning, and even though none of them can read yet, they have already started a love affair with books. Pumpkin even takes board books to bed with him. I'll peek in on him in the mornings sometimes and he will be sitting in bed flipping through the pages, looking at pictures, pointing and chattering. One day I hope to get a video of it, it is so precious to watch. I hope this is the start of a life-long love of learning.

Back to our chapter books.

Our very first chapter read-aloud was Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace. The Betsy-Tacy series is one of my absolute favorites. I have completely worn out my copy of at least six of the books. As I got older I mostly re-read her high school years, and then I fixated on Betsy and Great World, and especially on Betsy's Wedding for a long time. I probably read it close to a 30 or 40 times over the years. I loved it so much, and it was always next to my bed when I was a teenager. I had forgotten, though, how wonderful the very first books are. It was a joy to read, and both of my girls enjoyed it immensely.  We finished it in just a couple of days, as I was unable to resist whenever Darling would say, "Let's just keep reading." We started Betsy-Tacy and Tib and were over halfway through it when they went with their dad for a week. It was hard to pick back up where we left off, so I decided to just start a new book, The BFG by Roald Dahl.

I've been surprised to learn that whenever I mentioned we were reading The BFG, no one had heard of it. Really? I guess it's not his most popular work (I suppose the a story of how giants steal children and eat them doesn't have as much mass-appeal as a flying, giant peach or an eccentric chocolatier), but I remember my mother reading it to my brothers and me when we were little. I especially remember the part of the carbonation going down instead of up. Isn't is funny what sticks with you? Anyway, my girls and I all enjoyed it. We moved on to James and the Giant Peach, also by Roald Dahl, which we just finished last night. It was an enormous hit with everyone. Doodlebug said she wanted to ride on a giant peach. Darling said she was sure there was a giant peach roller coaster somewhere we could ride on. I remember these stories being fresh and captivating when I was a child; and they are even more so  now. Roald Dahl wrote classics, that's for sure. I can't wait to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. However, I really want to move on the Chronicles of Narnia next. We will start with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and read the series in the order the books were written. I know that most of the collections now put the books in chronological order, but I don't like it that way. I think it's so much nicer, more Narnian, when the timeline jumps around.

*8/14/11 Update: we actually started Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater, which Darling loved so much that we finished in three sittings---and most of that was in one sitting.

While I might have waited to delve into Narnia with the kids, I am a little bit paranoid that they will see the movies before they read the books. While, for the most part, I'm a fan of the movies of classic books, I think that every child deserves the opportunity to form their own opinions about the story first, in their head. Once they see the movie, they will forever envision those characters as the actors who played them, and they will never get another chance to form their own visions and make the story their own. This is one of the ways that movies can never be as powerful as great literature.

And lastly, I highly recommend The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease if you need extra recommendations for great books. I have my mother's copy from the '70's. While it is a fantastic list of books that make wonderful read-alouds, and a useful tool in building a solid home library, it is also a very informative about the importance and power of reading aloud to children even after they can read themselves.