A Lesson from The Hobbit
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I recently found this brief anecdote - in document form - from 2003. But the lesson is still valuable in any year…
3 lessons from reading The Hobbit last night:
1) Take pleasure in the words.
2) The qualitative experience is more important than efficiency.
3) They appreciate things you don’t.
- Last night I’m reading The Hobbit to my daughters. It’s not my favorite book. It’s already past 8:30. I’m just starting a new chapter. Tolkein’s chapters are rarely fast. There’s no way I’m going to be done by 9:00 p.m. I roll my eyes and try to marshall my patience. I have at least 4 things I want/need to do after the kids go to bed. But right now I have to get through Tolkein’s prose.
- I start in hurried. But I feel guilty quickly. This is not why I’m reading. And this is not why they’re listening. This is certainly not why they picked this book. I take a deep breath and remember my own advice: Take Pleasure in the Words. I begin to seek out the colorful adjectives, the active verbs, the Middle-Earth pronouns, the dramatic or humourous juxtapositions that make the prose come alive. I’m reading slower; I’m never gonna be done with the chapter by 9:00; but I can already see it in their faces. This is why they’re listening. They want to be turned on the by the juxtapositions, the hanging drama lurking in individual phrases and half sentences.
- I remember another lesson: The quality of the experience is more important than it’s efficient execution. There are lots of times when you feel like you need to rush to finish. But this should not be one of them. So what if we don’t finish the chapter? Or so what if I have to read past 9:00? One of ‘em has to give. I want to enjoy the experience - my half hour with my kids. Quiet, contemplative, stimulating, shared. This is the way to do it.
- Still, the chapter is a slow one. Gandalf is taking Bilbo and the dwarves to see some half-bear creature called Beorn. He instructs them to come up to the cave two by two in 5-minute intervals. Right away I can see that we’re in for a reprise of the first chapter - re-introducing the 12 dwarves - who I can’t keep straight anyway - let alone do all their voices. I brace myself, and prepare to speed up. But I can see also this is meant to be a humorous chapter. The bear-guy feigns surprise every time two new dwarves show up. It’s the same joke 6 times. But I can see that while the joke is old to me it works and builds and is funnier each time for my children. I need to do it justice, I need to sell Tolkein’s joke because it was meant for them. And isn’t one of the things I’m after the vicarious experience of seeing ther joy, seeing them laugh, bringing them a stimulating experience???
- I slow down again, sell the chapter, and enjoy my half hour with them. We didn’t finish the chapter. But I was reminded of valuable lessons. And they are all the more eager to finish the chapter tonight…
The Liberating Power of the Twang
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The Liberating Power of the Twang
Some books don’t seem to lend themselves as well to being read aloud. No matter how great they are, for whatever reason, they are harder to present orally.
One such book is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the touchstone of American fiction. Central to the book is Huck’s voice. The novel is presented in the first person and reading it you quickly inhabit Huck’s mind and world view. Huck is both naive and street smart at the same time. He is plucky and alert and still able to be duped or fooled. The prewar Mississippi River is a very foreign place and Huck is our guide. Much of it is familiar to him and it becomes familiar to us through his guidance. Much of it is alien and foreign to him - dangerous even - and we feel that through his own discoveries.
Reading to oneself, it is easier to fall into Huck’s method of storytelling. He disarms us with Twain’s notorious first sentences: “You don’t know me without you have read a book by the name of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”
Huck’s storytelling style is pell-mell - the events and sentences and twists and turns and occasional moralizing or interpreting come one after the other with little pause. There is a cascading sense of curiosity and discovery as the anecdotes and stories and circumstances and characters who people the Mississippi follow one after another. Huck’s occasional pauses to interpret or philosophize are welcome but usually brief. Huck Finn is an unending ride - a tour of Americana.
And then there is Huck’s voice - a voice from 19th century America, Missouri to be precise. A largely uneducated voice and hence full of slang. And nonstandard English. This is a celebrated part of the book - intended by Twain to be so - and one of the many sources of its influences. But it presents certain challenges to an oral reading.
Daunting challenges Huck’s voice is full of charm as you decipher his locutions. But try to present his unfamiliar lingo and it becomes more difficult. Adjusting to the pace of his stories can be even harder. Good reading is usually stately and graceful, respecting and attending to punctuation, drawing out the language and whatever verbal riches lurk. No one wants to read at a breakneck pace and yet many of Huck’s tales demand it.
But I may have found a solution. One which applies to other works as well. Let’s discuss the liberating power of the twang.
A year ago, I read my family Shiloh, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Newbery winning book about a boy and a dog in rural West Virginia. The narrator, 11-year-old Marty Preston, doesn’t drop a lot of ‘-ing’s, but he does say ‘ain’t’ and uses ‘don’t’ for doesn’t and employs a handful of other verbal mannerisms we associate with a rural environment. It was hard - impossible - for me not to read Marty without a bit of an accent. Call it Southern, call it rural, call it Western - it doesn’t really matter - I am guessing you know what I mean. Nearly everyone can do a ‘hick’ accent. To some it comes naturally. Others may need to borrow from a film or TV show. (The world abounds with them.) Understand - I mean no disrespect when I call it a ‘hick’ accent. I use the term colloquially. It’s just an accent that drawls and is not scrupulous about things like ‘ing’s. When you fall under it’s sway, it becomes easier to say “ain’t” (if it normally is difficult). And lots of other moments in a character’s speech become liberated. Emphasis. Enthusiasm. You’re just generally looser when you start using it. You don’t need to become Gomer Pyle to give such a character his voice.
Marty Preston is a reflective little boy, so he doesn’t need to be oversold. Indeed his reflections impart a quiet dignity. (And how many taciturn cowboys haven’t presented dignity with their ‘hick’ accents.) But I found that reading Shiloh that way opened up the book. The accent gave Marty’s voice life. It gave the book momentum. It freed me and my listeners. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s prose is strong enough that dressing it up with Gomer Pyle is unnecessary. But a little twang - what I would now like to call the liberating power of the twang - released Marty and Shiloh for me. It allows you to read Shiloh with a kid’s enthusiasm, and as long as you don’t overdo it Marty can still present the quiet dignity he possesses.
I brought that Twang to Huck Finn. Heck, it could have come from anywhere. When you read The Indian and the Cupboard, you’ve got to do something to dress up the cowboy, Boone. He is a tobacco-spitting Texan and outsize all the way, nearly stepping out of a tall tale. It doesn’t really matter who you draw your twang from. When I faced Huck Finn again the lilt and freedom of Marty Preston helped me out. Huck is a hick, too. He’s one we respect. We know he will share himself and his conscience. But he’s barefoot and dirty and can’t wait to get some peace and privacy to smoke his corncob pipe. He needs some twang to tell his stories. The first sentences tell you so.
How much twang is up to you. But adding it frees up the prose of Huck Finn considerable. It allows you to adopt a different persona, one perhaps looser and freer than your own. It is liberating. So run with it. When Huck is telling a story, imagine him slapping his knee and sell it. When Huck is talking with the Tom’s gang - or dealing with the raftsmen on the Mississippi River (e.g. the Child of Calamity - a true character from a tall tale) - bring in Boone and ham it up. (Imagine him slapping his cowboy hat on his knee and stomping the floor with his boot.) Be demonstrative. Huck will seem dignified in comparison.
Adding the twang makes it easier to read faster - Huck’s pell-mell stories - without being embarrassed or self-conscious or losing your listener. Instead it will bring your listener closer with anticipation. It will suggest the trust that Twain’s prose and storytelling style demand and merit.
And it will really come in handy when you get to - and spend considerable time with - the Duke and the Dauphin. Occasional readers tire of these characters - they are so over the top and so conspicuously transparent. They don’t understand why Twain extends the joke so long. (Twain has other fish to fry - things to reveal about identity and dissimilitude on the American frontier that we needn’t get into here.) Twain intends more than short term jokes with the Duke and the Dauphin. The story about the funeral (and potential inheritance) they stumble into has long-term play. But adding the theatrical touch - Huck’s twang - makes it all a little easier to take a deep breath and dive into the silly antics of the Duke and the Dauphin and their mock aristocracy.
The twang can’t solve everything. And it’s certainly not for everything. And I am not suggesting here for a minute that one need become attentive to or expert in the variety of Western or Southern or rural or agricultural accents. That is the province of the professional. But I am suggesting that adding that twang, dropping those ‘ing’s, letting the drawl flow - that all of that will loosen you up and loosen up a book’s prose. It’s like a shot of verbal whiskey, steeling you for the challenge and loosening your tongue. Take a slug and let loose the liberating power of the twang! Once you get off the Mississippi, a whole world of Americana awaits you.
– LBCjr
10.1.08
Score One for Good Literature
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A guest entry from a correspondent in northern California:
(My son) Kyle is a big Star Wars fan and recently got (for his birthday) the novelization of the recent animated Star Wars movie. First off, the movie itself was beyond awful (of course, the kids enjoyed it, but it was truly terrible). You can imagine what this implies for the quality of the book. It’s a painful reading experience for me, but — under the premise that any reading interest of Kyle’s should be encouraged — I’ll grudgingly read the book with him in our pre-bedtime read aloud sessions. I remember my Mom used to defend me from teachers who thought it was unproductive that my only reading interest in second grade were titles like “Great NFL quarterbacks” or “Great NFL Upsets.” Still, it’s painful vocalizing the insipid dialogue.
I find the Star Wars (or Pokemon, another favorite of Kyle’s) type reading so painful that I’m constantly trying to steer him elsewhere. I had picked up an abridged version of Treasure Island on a recent trip to Barnes and Noble. I bribed Kyle into letting me read it to him by telling him I’d read two chapters of Star Wars for every one chapter of Treasure Island (if nothing else, the kid will learn the meaning of exchange rates). After I finished 3 chapters, Kyle was begging me to keep reading and voluntarily gave up the exchange rate deal in order to get more Treasure Island. It was great — he was physically curled up in a tense, expectant ball waiting to see whether the pirates would discover Jim and kill him like they had some others from among the “good guys.” Lots of guns, blood, and other various encounters with dangerous pirates. It’s a rewarding feeling to watch a child fall prey to the grip of a truly great story.
Interestingly, a determinant of Kyle’s interest in a book is whether or not it has illustrations. The TI copy I purchased has a few, but not enough to catch Kyle’s eye. I need to be mindful of this as I choose other “quality” books for him. I don’t want to denigrate his own reading choices like Star Wars b/c I want to practice reading, regardless of the content. Still, for read aloud time, it’s a heck of a lot more fun for me with a quality story in my hands.
Aim Low
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Aim Low
My own daughters are getting older now. Entering high school. I can recall wistfully the moment not long ago when we realized we had purchased “the last picture book.” So sometimes my musings can tend toward the high minded, what to do with your older children, as in my recent Aim High column. But there is a flip side.
I am here now to remember the simple pleasures and joys of reading picture books out loud. To children of any age. Reading picture books to children who cannot yet read is the start and the heart of reading aloud. It is when children learn that books contain a world of vibrant mystery and imagination, continually new, continually stimulating. Each book different, each book offering a different pleasure or stimulus. It is when adults learn the techniques of gauging and adapting to their children’s attention spans and varying restlessness. It is also when adults learn the reading techniques that not only hold but increase their children’s interest level, making the experience so rewarding that the child will be the one clamoring for more.
Young children crave the familiar. They rarely tire of repetition. They want to hear and see the same books over and over again. Sometime even the same book over and over again. It’s a security thing. They constantly want reassurance that the world is the way they have come to understand and interpret it to be. Change is unsettling and so young children crave security.
I have even known graduating younger children to want to hear - or read themselves - the same chapter book over again. (Heck, maybe you have a favorite book you return to. I know I do. Even as we become adults and learn to manage change, it doesn’t mean we don’t want a little reassurance and security, too.)
But sometimes, that repetition and sameness can be wearing, trying, even boring. Reading Go, Dog. Go! for the umpteenth time, so that you practically have it memorized - “Go around again!” - that can become monotonous. The obvious solution is to keep things fresh by staying alert, making regular trips to the library or bookstore. Sometimes children will resist this, but not often. Each book is a brand new world, each page might yield a new surprise or picture, each story may have a new magic moment. Children learn this as you have learned it. That is what coming to appreciate books is all about.
There are some things you do to make reading picture books more interesting, more stimulating - just in case it threatens to get old. Happily, these are things I recommend doing anyway as they are techniques that maximize the experience of ‘listening to’ picture books, too.
The biggest key - other than the obvious one of adapting to your child’s interests - is to make reading picture books interactive. I am not saying this is something you “have” to do, and certainly not something you need to do every time. (Sometimes children just want to be safe and quiet and cuddly. What can be nicer for a parent - knowing how fleeting that time in their life is?) But it is something very much worth doing. It maximizes the interest children can find and make in picture books. It teaches them how to find points of interest in future books - on their own. It acculturates them to be alert and observant and thorough. And it keeps them on their toes. It makes reading more than passive. It makes it stimulating.
Tip #1 is to ask your children to find things in the pictures. Sometimes this can interrupt the narrative or flow or momentum of a story, so it may not be ideal the first time through a story. (Unless you judiciously keep it to a handful of items.) But especially when you’re plowing through familiar fare, start pointing. Ask questions. Get your child to guide you through the text.
“Can you find the monkey?” “What color is the balloon?” “How many ducklings are there?” (“Five? Are you sure? I think I can find seven…”) “I see four different kinds of cars in the city. Can you find all four?”
These kinds of questions bring the entire world of a story’s illustrations into play. Your child may already appreciate the details of a story’s world. Asking questions lets them take control, become the guide, and become proud of mastering its knowledge. It teaches them to be both observant and thorough. Along the way, depending on their age, it’s a fine way to rehearse childhood knowledge, from colors and counting, to specialist info like the difference between taxis and dump trucks, or hippos and rhinos. Children are hungry for knowledge and even the simplest books are an endless source.
Asking questions will also make the act of reading more stimulating for you, too. It may require a tad more energy. But it provides you a new way to bond and paves the way for interrogative interactions. It also shows your child you care about both the book and the experience. (Just in case your sighs and monotone might have crept in after the fifteenth reading.)
Tip #2 is to sell the prose. This is easier when the prose is better, but important nonetheless. It is probably more important when reading chapter books. (Finding vocabulary and phrases worth selling, subtly or emphatically.) But it is can be easier when reading picture books. Some picture books have so little prose, you can treat each sentence like some special haiku, even if - or especially if - it’s merely there to introduce the next illustration. Some books are more plot driven and when this is so, it’s hard not to read in a pell-mell style, overwhelmed by the need to find out what happens next. But I think it’s worth finding ways - or moments - to be patient. Not to frustrate your child. But to teach them the pleasure of anticipation. (After all, the story will be over much too soon, anyway.)
Involving your child in the prose is easier when reading Dr. Seuss (or any other book that rhymes easily, well, and somewhat predictably.) Dr. Seuss writes in verse, but it is verse with an easy, loping rhythm. When I begin to recognize the rhyme scheme, I will often stop just before the phrase which completes a couplet or rhyme - and let my child finish the line. This is easiest when they already know they story, but it is still plenty easy - and worthwhile - when they don’t. (You can start with just expecting the last word of a rhyme, but it won’t be long until your child can deliver a phrase entire, and even the whole line.) It’s a minor way of asking, ‘What happens next?,’ except that it requires their brains to interact with the language, to sense how the parts fit together. There is nothing better for a child’s brain when listening to text, even if it’s only Dr. Seuss. Making this kind of observation and anticipation second nature is what will enable your child to unconsciously attend to the components of a grammatically correct sentence when they get to school. It is truly the best way to prepare for the SATs. Not that you’re worrying about that when your child is four. But it’s the most helpful thing you can do.
Be Prepared
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Be Prepared
How to Make the Time. That’s Tip #2 from my list of ten reading tips. In order to read aloud consistently, and especially to be able to start and finish chapter books, you have to make the time. You have to preserve the time, commit to the time, exploit the time.
But you also have to be ready, to be alert and spontaneous - extemporaneous - to take advantage of idle moments with little to do together but read aloud. To that end, I recommend bringing a book with you wherever you go. Whatever book you are presently reading with your child or children, or even whatever book you hope to read next. Just throw it in your pocket book or knapsack or into the car whenever you’re heading out to do errands or on an outing. You never know when you’re going to get held up and have some downtime. And downtime, even when it’s unexpected - some would say especially when it’s unexpected - is an ideal time to read aloud. An ideal opportunity to snatch a few chapters.
You may get a flat tire and have an hour to kill before the tow truck gets there. You may be at the doctor’s office (or any waiting room) and have an unknown period of time to wait. You may be in traffic. You just never know when you’re going to be granted an extra 20 minutes you didn’t count on. And when it comes, don’t curse it. Grasp it. Exploit it. Bless it.
A recent example:
I am a baseball fan. We have a AAA baseball team in our town and my family - my wife and three daughters - like to go to the games. When I go to the game, I am a pretty intense fan. I like to keep score. But I always bring a book to the game, too. Not because I might get bored or because baseball is slow. But because it’s a baseball game and you never know. You never know when there is going to be downtime, some kind of delay. I rarely read my book at the game. (Except when we get there really early for batting practice.) But I always have it just in case.
When I go with my family I bring a book, too - our family book. Whatever we happen to be reading. Have we ever read the book at the game? I don’t think we have. There’s just too much to enjoy - the tableaux of the stadium and the game itself. Until this summer.
We went to a game in July, all set to see the visiting Pawtucket Red Sox. My daughters came eager to see some of the Red Sox players they know who were currently playing down with the farm team. We enjoyed batting practice. One of my daughters managed to get an autograph. But then an afternoon thunderstorm rolled in. I actually went out to the car to get our rain gear. From the parking lot I could see a real bad dark thunderstorm coming in from the west. I knew this would be a ferocious one, but hopefully brief.
When I returned to our seats, although it was only sprinkling lightly, I suggested we repair to the upper seats well under cover. I had heard on the radio that the game wouldn’t start until the storm passed through. So I knew we had at least another half hour - probably more - until the game might start. My family happily left our seats and we climbed the stadium steps all the way to the top row. Way high up. Safe from the rain.
And I took out our book. We were far from the field, far from the players, essentially removed. With little else to do. It helped that our current book happened to be a baseball book, Keeping Score, the newest book by Linda Sue Park, winner of the Newbery Award for A Single Shard. Nobody objected. In fact everyone was eager. And so we read three chapters up there in the top row waiting for the storm to break and pass.
When the storm came, we had a terrific view. It was indeed ferocious. We could see our city getting pummeled. We could see the sheets of rain, windblown and swirling. We could see light objects torn and whipped in the wind. But we were safe and dry and content.
As it turns out the game was canceled. But the day was not a total loss. We came home and finished our book within the week.
But retain an image of the curious family, up in the top row of the stadium, reading their book, all ears attentive, while the wind brings the rain and the air fills with the tang of thunder. It was an idyllic, unforgettable, one-time moment for us. But it serves as a useful reminder: You never know when you’re going to be given an unexpected opportunity. So be prepared.
*
[Note: In case you’re interested, Linda Sue Park’s Keeping Score is about a young girl, Maggie-O, who lives in Brooklyn in the 1950s. She roots for Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers and listens to the games on the radio at the firehouse. One of the firefighters, Jim, teachers her how to keep score (something every baseball fan should know) and it becomes her particular pleasure, something that helps her connect more deeply and fundamentally to the game. Later, Jim is sent to fight in the Korean War, and Maggie-O maintains a correspondence, through baseball naturally, while he is there. The novel was perfect for my family. Despite my earnest efforts to teach my girls how to keep score, it was only Maggie-O and Linda Sue Park who made them want to.]
Aim High
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Reading aloud to your children starts when your children are small, before they can read to themselves. It starts with toddlers learning that those spines on the shelf contain a world of color and variety and surprise, pages filled with animals and imaginative places - a limitless world of mountains and rainbows and forests and ice cream cones and creatures galore.
At some point, though, you and your child make the mysterious transition from reading picture books to reading chapter books. When this happens, narrative begins to matter more, the illustrations less. But good literature still has other “illustrative” pleasures - the skill and tone of the author; the unique way he/she paints with words; the felicitous or memorable phrases or moments conjured in the mind; the creation of characters and snatches of dialogue that hit home emotionally and stay with you (and your listener) long after a book is closed.
All of this comes from good literature, of any length, aimed at any reading level. It can come from William Steig’s little 170 pp. gem, Dominic, or from behemoths like the final installments of the Harry Potter series. The rewards are varied - from Steig’s choice vocabulary to J.K. Rowling’s indelible moments, both humorous and scary. But they come from painting with words, from the skill and artistry of the author’s prose, and from his/her effectiveness at sparking a child’s imagination to conjure and envision those words and worlds and moments.
These pleasures and rewards are of course available in all literature, including or especially literature written for or aimed at (or primarily consumed by) adults. And I am here suggest that you can share some of these works, too, with your children - as a family. You don’t have to confine yourself to the children’s section of the library or bookstore - as rich as it may be. Sometime you may want a different source of variety and you shouldn’t be afraid to try to branch out to a higher level of the shelf. It will be good for your children - horizon-expanding - and salutary for you as the adult reader.
None of us want our children to grow up too fast. From the time they are 2 to the time they are 17 we are constantly aware of the undulating way in which our children can seem young and carefree and silly, and the way they can be alternately mature and precocious and sophisticated. But there is an awfully wide area of balance in between. I know in my house, sometimes my children want to watch a silly movie that I’d just as soon pass on; and sometimes they are ready for more substantial fare that I can’t wait to share with them.
For me, much of the pleasure of reading aloud is the vicarious thrill I get sharing great moments - funny moments, scary moments, famous moments. I love anticipating how they’ll react when Luke discovers Darth Vader is his father; or how they’ll handle wondering about whether or not to trust Severus Snape; or how they’ll react emotionally when Charlotte dies. There are innumerable iconic moments like this and though I can’t be there for all of them, part of the joy of being a parent is knowing your children have those moments ahead of them and you can share in their experience. That is why families in the middle of a good book invariably have one parent who says, “Don’t read until I get home.” They don’t want to miss anything. More specifically they don’t want to miss out on any of their children’s reactions, any of the choice things they might say or do or the questions they might ask.
But you don’t just have to read children’s books to have these moments. You can aim higher, stimulate all of your adult brain receptors, and raise your children’s sights, too. There are some families that read beyond Harry Potter - they read J.R.R. Tolkein, too, all 1300 pages of the Lord of the Rings saga. In our own family, we tackled Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer a couple of years ago. A century ago, Mark Twain might have been standard reading for school age children, but no more. Now Twain’s work is “classic” and today’s children are not as familiar - not initially comfortable - with an older and more elliptical method of storytelling. We read it aloud with a thirteen-year-old, a ten-year-old, and a seven-year-old. I think it was a clear case where it might not have worked if we hadn’t tackled it as a family. The 13-year-old cottoned on to Twain’s humour right away. Her laughter made the rest of the story, and particularly Twain’s method of telling the story, infectious for everyone else. My 7-year-old might not have been able to grasp the story if it had just been me and her trying to tackle Twain. But in a family setting, moments great and small, from Tom watching the beetle in church, to Tom and Becky lost in the cave in the 4th of July, came alive and worked their magic on one and all. Experienced together as a family, the humour and pleasures of the book were enhanced, the memories sharper and even more enduring. (And our youngest even named her new puppy, ‘Sawyer’ as a result.)
Reading aloud with your children is often about showing them things they didn’t know - they can’t know - they will like and enjoy. It’s about expanding their horizons, teaching them - vicariously - how to appreciate and become alert to more in the world - more people and places and historical situations. It is to make them not only more sophisticated in the vocabulary they acquire, but less provincial about attitudes - places and times and peoples - different than their own. That is why it is worth aiming high and occasionally exposing your children - and your family - to more sophisticated fare.
Here are three other titles that I have exposed my family to in the last three years that are perhaps worth sharing:
The Power of One, by Bryce Courtenay. A novel about a young English boy growing up in South Africa before W.W.II. In the first half of the book he endures prep school as a persecuted minority at the hands of the Afrikaner majority. He thus has a natural affinity and respect for the even more persecuted black population of South Africa. The tale includes adult allies of the hero, nicknamed Peekay, including a Zulu witch doctor, a train conductor who instructs him in boxing, and a German professor of botany and zoology. In the last portion of the book, Peekay grows up to work in a diamond mine in Rhodesia. The book is not aimed at children. The persecution and cruelty in the book are exactly as harsh and as cruel as you’d expect in a book of the American South. But with a child narrator - who even befriends a scrawny chicken he names Grandpa Chook - it is all too easy for children with a secret hunger for sophistication to follow Peekay as their guide to another world - another place and time - while still learning some of the universal truths about survival (in this case, finding the power and strength to remain independent and true to yourself) that you’d expect from any long-lasting work of fiction. These lessons, brought to us from unexpected characters and venues, are exactly what we read literature for. The graduation from Charlotte’s Web to To Kill a Mocking Bird eventually leads here.
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway. This one was by accident. I came across a brilliant, unabridged, audio recording of this book read by Campbell Scott, a little known American actor and director. Scott’s reading is pitch perfect. It exactly reproduces the way my own mind’s eye imagines Hemingway’s prose - the flat, beguiling simplicity - and the lugubrious, world-weary yet wise way in which Hemingway’s Spanish characters express themselves. I’ve listened to this recording in the car (yes, you can put audio books on your iPod, too) and it has unexpectedly - yet charmingly - caught the ear of my wife and two oldest daughters. For Whom the Bell Tolls is a tale of the Spanish Civil War, a romantic story of an American fighting for the Republic against the Fascists, teaming up with a band of guerrillas in the mountains. The book is long, almost 500 pp., much longer than some of Hemingway’s other well known novels like The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms or The Old Man and the Sea. Once again, the book is not written for children. But when you are aiming high you must be alert for what might unexpectedly grab their attention and beguile and teach them in ways you may not have first have anticipated. My older children became charmed by the atmosphere of the pine needles and the cooking smoke in the mountains of Spain, by the repartee of the band of gypsies and guerrillas trying to survive there. Like most Americans, they need a primer on the Spanish Civil War, but part of Hemingway’s genius is to reflect the common simplicity of the soldiers fighting for both sides, while offering their struggle as an existential example of how to live. Hemingway admits the horrors committed by both sides in the conflict - again, why this is not a book written for children - but when children are old enough to know about war and what transpires within, then they are old enough to come to terms with Ernest Hemingway’s prose and lucky enough - if you take them - to have their eyes opened to a timeless account of how common soldiers appreciate the simplest things in life - a bowl of soup, a bird wheeling in the sky, a companion at night - amidst their struggle.
True Grit, by Charles Portis. Another felicitous accident - but what friends are for. True Grit was written in 1968 and quickly made into a famous movie starring John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn. At the time it was a phenomenon. Today it is a forgotten classic. A friend recently shared it with me and what a joyous and serendipitous discovery it turned out to be. It checks in under 250 pages. Written in the first person, this story is told by its young protagonist, 14-year-old Mattie Ross. Mattie aims to avenge the wrongful death of her father in Fort Smith, Arkansas (circa 1875), and to do so she recruits the talents of the notorious federal marshal, Rooster Cogburn. The book is unexpectedly comic and funny. I can’t tell you when I’ve laughed out loud as often. Mattie challenges the adults around her - almost all of them tough, western, frontier men - and holds her own and gets her way. She is also charmingly matter of fact about all that befalls her, especially the thorns and scrapes of her time. As a result, True Grit reads like Cormac McCarthy, but with humour in droves. Is it for children? I am sure the film, which won John Wayne his only Oscar, was seen by countless children in 1969. Today? As I laughed my way through Mattie’s quest to track down her father’s killer, I couldn’t help but imagine how much my own daughters would admire and identify with Mattie’s spitfire mettle. Mattie’s humorous observations (“Men would live like goats if left alone,” she notes, upon entering Rooster’s living quarters) are just as funny to them as they are to us. And Mattie’s matter of fact tone provides an educational introduction to a foreign time and its mores, from attending a public hanging to sleeping in a barn or sharing a bed in a rooming house. As it happened, I managed to cajole my oldest daughter to reread it aloud to me (while cooking and doing other household chores - it is summer). She took to it instantly. Though not a performer, she very quickly acquired an Arkansas drawl to make Mattie’s “voice” convincing. Doing so made reading aloud more fun for her, the reader, and more fun for me, the listener. And it was Portis’ text that led her to it - not my suggestion or inveigling. True Grit ends with a rousing, exciting, funny, elongated, drawn out climax that thrilled my daughter - and her listening sister - into cascading giggles. What better way to share “adult” literature? Along the way, both my daughter’s gained access to Mattie Ross’s ahead-of-her-time independence, properly couched in a Protestant spinster’s sense of rectitude. What better way to get a sense of the strange and foreign attraction and charm of the past? And that’s what literature is for. When you aim high.
[Caveat: I must emphasize that each of these books contains material which might be objectionable for some adults to share with children. Speaking at schools about children’s literature people can find all kinds of things to use to set limits, from witchcraft to nudity to curse words. On my own account, I tend to think if the language, for example, is part of its time period, then it comes with protective quotation marks. Such language is not an endorsement from the author or reader. But others disagree. What I say about television applies here, too: It’s not as important what your policy is as that you have a policy. I can understand if anyone objects to the nudity or racism in The Power of One; to the sexuality or violence in For Whom the Bell Tolls; or to the violence or language (though common to generations of Saturday Westerns) in True Grit. It is really up to each parent to police their children’s reading and decide what pace is appropriate to introduce more sophisticated fare. I repeat only that it is also each parent’s corollary responsibility to be alert for those moments when your child may be ready to aim higher, and to take advantage of them. Read on and aim high.]
[Second caveat: Coincidentally, I have since learned that Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is a favorite book of both current presidential candidates. Barack Obama cited it as one of the three most influential books he had read. And John McCain is known to quote from it regularly. It’s not every day a book published over fifty years ago can strike a chord like that with two men, influential and opposed. Yet another reason to take a flier and explore.]
Honor the Story
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The other day, I was reflecting on what it took to get all the disparate members of my family to stop what they were doing and sit down to listen to a story. As kids get older, with a variety of interests and more complex schedules, it gets harder. And in our modern age, with more and more to distract and attract us, it gets harder still. In my own family, I know it’s still possible because each and every one of us is willing, eager even, to fall under the sway of a story. It’s not the first thing each of us thinks of. But every one of us knows the pleasures, pleasures rich enough to induce each of to say, “OK, I’ll do such and such later. Right now - it’s story time.”
I’d like to say the story speaks for itself. And it does. But that is not always enough. The willingness to fall under the sway of the story - to sit still that long, to put off the need for constant visual stimulation, to maintain the patience it may require to give the story a page - or a chapter - or two to become captivating - is also a cultivated habit.
So how do you cultivate that habit? You must honor the story. You must create an ethos, an ethic, a culture in which all are slaves to the narrative, in which everything else stops while that chapter is being read. It requires respect for everyone else listening. It requires the suppression of individual desires (to go the bathroom, to get a snack, to crack a joke, to answer the phone). But most of all, it requires respect for the story itself.
This is a habit which can be cultivated when your children are young. Everyone knows what it’s like to have a small child on your lap, reading a picture book, someone comes in the room, and you pick your head up and say, “We’ll be with you as soon as we finish this story.” We have the confidence to do this because whoever comes in the room knows a picture book can only last another few minutes. We have the desire to do this because we don’t want to break the brief, fragile, special spell the story has cast on our little lap sitter. We have a vicarious stake in the world of their imagination. We are honoring the story.
This is no different when reading a chapter book, but this truth is harder to recognize because when we are older - as students or parents - the things that distract us - the call from a friend, the incoming text message, the e-mail update - all seem more important. Those things can be important, but you have to ask yourself if the brief twenty minutes shared together, under the spell of a common cultural medium - a story - is in fact not worth more. In most cases, the irritation with having to check those messages later is insignificant in comparison with the magic of family time gained. It is really more an exercise in self-control.
In truth, this habit can also be cultivated - or re-enforced - by examining one’s viewing habits. In fact, viewing habits can inhibit or retard the principles of honoring the story. I’ll bet everyone knows the phenomenon of young children at a birthday party; someone puts on a movie thinking it will entertain the children for an hour or so; and twenty minutes in half the kids are wandering around. This isn’t just because some kids have shorter attention spans or some kids have already seen the movie. It’s because some children don’t grow up honoring the narrative. For many, putting on a film is just like putting on the television. It’s constant background noise, something to be tuned in or tuned out at will, as the impulse strikes. It is lamentable, but it is also preventable.
A movie is a story, too. A finite tale with a beginning, middle, and end. Its narrative, too, can be honored - should be honored - because doing so will pay dividends elsewhere. I often speak about the value of the “pause button” when reading a book out loud, how a book affords the opportunity to pause at will, to discuss a point, to ask a brief question, to reset the attention span. The metaphor is of course imported from the television. But in my experience, many families don’t avail themselves of the pause button when watching a movie. When a child needs to go to the bathroom, or get a snack, they miss five minutes. Yes, it’s not the end of the world, but it disrespects the story. Everything from not using the pause button to having the television on as constant background teaches disrespect for the story. It suggests that choosing a story on film is just an ephemeral distraction, of no lasting importance.
If you want your family to mutually cherish the twenty minutes it takes to suspend everything - everyone putting off or suspending or restraining something - to respect the story, then look at your own family viewing habits. Ask yourself if the pause button isn’t in fact the key to honoring the story the next time you want to brave a chapter book as a family. Ask yourself if that isn’t the first way to recognize and value and then preserve the quiet and silence and commitment it takes to read a chapter book out loud. The restraint may seem momentous, but is a small thing really (saying “not now” to a text message?). But the dividends for your family, and for your children’s literary understanding, are enormous. If you teach respect for the story - for the sanctity of the narrative - then the next time you want to read aloud it will be a little bit easier. Every one will think first of the thing they are putting off. But if they remember the special value of that shared twenty minutes - the laughs and thrills and shared expectation and choice prose bits - then they will choose the story over another ephemeral twenty minutes at the computer.
Know Your Book I: An Elbow in the Ribs
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Know Your Book I: An Elbow in the Ribs
One of my reading tips is to Know Your Book. At the most basic level this means adapting your reading style to your book. If you’re reading a silly book to small children it is appropriate - nay, encouraged - to ham it up. If you’re reading a more serious book for older children, it is often better to play it more deadpan and let the prose do the work, to let the details of the story come at the listener on their own.
But knowing your book also means knowing what’s inside, being able to anticipate any thorny moments - scary, emotional, thematically uncomfortable - so that you are ready with a strategy to defuse them. Knowing your book also means recognizing a slow section - to make sure you power through it - or an exciting or important moment in the book - to make sure you protect it from interruption.
Occasionally, though, you will encounter an author whose style is hard to decipher, hard to figure out how to read. In my experience this happens most often when you are reading something someone else has recommended. (It worked for them, why isn’t it working for you?) Or when you are reading a classic, something the opinion of generations has recommended, yet you cannot manage to unlock.
Me, I have trouble with A.A. Milne’s Pooh stories. Don’t ask me why. Children love them, but I just can’t seem to find the right tone to pull them off. I am either too simple, or too knowing. And I feel stupid and uncomfortable and self-conscious. I just can’t access the right restrained yet arch silliness.
But there is one book, which gave me great trouble, that I was eventually able to unlock - Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. Kipling is a master of English prose and has written books for various reading levels. The Just So Stories are the simplest; the two Jungle Books are a step beyond; and then if they’re game children can graduate to Kim or Captains Courageous.
But if the Just So Stories are the “easiest” - i.e. aimed at the youngest children - how could they give trouble? Perhaps you know “The Cat Who Walked By Himself” or “How the Camel Got His Hump,” two of the stories from this collection that have been anthologized most. If I can’t read that, I asked myself, what is my problem? But I couldn’t. There was something stilted about the rhythm of the prose. Just when I thought Kipling was all set to ease into his moralistic fable, he would interrupt himself. I just couldn’t get it right. And when an adult is starting and stopping and re-starting - interrupting himself - then the book will not work for listening children. (Even if is the author’s fault.)
Here is the first paragraph of my favorite story from the collection, “The Beginning of the Armadilloes,” just so you can see what I’m on about:
This, O Best Beloved, is another story of the High and Far-Off Times.
In the very middle of those times was a Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog, and
he lived on the banks of the turbid Amazon, eating shelly snails and
things. And he had a friend, a Slow-Solid Tortoise, who lived on the
banks of the turbid Amazon, eating green lettuce and things. And so
that was all right, Best Beloved. Do you see?
Now what do you do with all of those “Best Beloveds” and the interrogative at the end? Maybe you’re quicker than me, but I honestly couldn’t figure it out.
Until I lucked into a solution. I happen to read something more about Rudyard Kipling, about his time in Vermont (he lived in Brattleboro, where he wrote the two Jungle Books). About his young children growing up in Vermont and about how he actually wrote the Just So Stories for them.
Suddenly I was able to conjure an image of Kipling sitting in his chair, and his daughter coming up and asking him to read one of the Just So Stories, or perhaps even asking him to tell the story that he would eventually set down in the book. And since I have been that father - with a young daughter in his lap - it was easy to imagine what that must have been like - the little private playful encouraging dialogue you have with a young child on your lap, to get them interested, to keep them interested, to make the story interactive. And suddenly, the prose of the Just So Stories was unlocked
Now what do you do with all of those “Best Beloveds” and the interrogative at the end? When I thought about Kipling’s daughter, Josephine, sitting on his lap, I had the answer. For she is clearly the “Best Beloved.” And Kipling’s conversational tone is now clearly evident as interacting with such a child sitting on his lap.
So now read the first paragraph anew. Armed with this insight, it becomes all too easy to turn and look at your own Best Beloved - perhaps jarring them with a playful elbow in the ribs, as I am wont to do - and make the story interacticve. Do you see?
*
Incidentally, one of the strengths of Kipling’s prose, here in this paragraph and throughout a work for children like the Just So Stories, is the repetition of choice, descriptive adjectival phrases like “the turbid Amazon.” This is a technique as old and well practiced as Homer (e.g. his ‘wine dark sea’). But still just as effective. For a child listener, such a phrase becomes familiar and valued. For the pedagogue in each of us, it is a prime example of how language and vocabulary are delivered to and absorbed by the child listener. They don’t need to ask “What does ‘turbid’ mean?” - and you don’t have to stop and tell them. Most likely, after hearing it a dozen times in the story, they’ll figure it out. And if not, the word will surely be lodged in their mental armory. The next time they hear it or see it, it will already be familiar, even if their minds are still collating information to pin down the exact meaning. But that happens unconsciously. It happens in myriad ways with myriad pieces of information. Our job is merely to expose them to such language.
So read on - and don’t forget the well placed elbow in the ribs if it can make the story or prose more interactive.
(Now if someone will tell me how to read the Winnie the Pooh stories, I’d really appreciate it.)
Read Like It’s An Ice Cream Cone
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Read Like It’s an Ice Cream Cone
This week we started our tenth book in the One School, One Book program at Fox Elementary School. We’re doing Heartbeat, by Sharon Creech, the first time we’ve done a second book by an author we’ve done before.
We’ve waited some time to do this book - essentially waiting for National Poetry Month. Like Creech’s Love That Dog, Heartbeat tells a story through easy to read, virtual prose poems. But this time the story is beefed up, encompassing and weaving together as many as six themes (much as Creech does in her longer novels for older children, like Walk Two Moons.)
On Friday we introduced the book to the children via an assembly. Each time we do a new book, we have to come up with a new idea for the assembly, too. I believe a hallmark of the assembly is that it should not tell too much, that it should introduce some element of the book that will spark children’s curiosity, but that the book itself should remain somewhat mysterious. The idea is to induce children to lean forward and look harder to find out what the book is about. To bring that curiosity and enthusiasm home to their families.
So we decided to “introduce” the children to each of the story’s six “themes” - but elliptically, symbolically, suggestively. We put up on the stage, on little individual pedestals: a pumpkin, a stuffed animal alien, a pair of running shoes, a set of drawing pencils in a fancy case, a Max (from Where the Wild Things Are) figurine, a thesaurus, and a set of false teeth in a jar. (Heartbeat is narrated by a 12-year-old girl who likes to run, and draw, and write, who is friends with a boy named Max, whose mother is about to have a baby, and whose grandfather is losing his memory.) We displayed each of these items to the children, telling them they represented “things to look for in the story,” but did not explain anything further.
Then I read a sample chapter.
Now reading an excerpt is the tried and true, fail-safe method of introducing your One Book at the Assembly. In this case we opted for the excerpt because I wanted to share with the children the importance and value (and technique) of reading a poem slowly, not just racing thru because there are so few words on the page. [Caveat: I never tell anyone how they should read a book. If children, or families, want to read the book quickly, of course that is their pre-rogative. The suggested technique is just that - a suggestion. Mere advice.] The particular challenge was to find a method that children, upon hearing it, might actually be able to take home and share with their families.
So I asked them (knowing the answer) if they knew what it was like when you have an ice cream cone, and you don’t want it to go away too fast, you want to make it last as long as possible. My recommendation was to try to read the poems in Heartbeat like that - savoring the juicy words and choice phrases, letting yourself absorb the emotional moments before moving onto the next one - reading the poems in Heartbeat as if they were an ice cream cone. Each poem a lick that you want to finish tasting and enjoying - savoring - until the next.
And so I read an eight-page poem, “An Apple A Day,” a poem you can read in less than a minute if you’re flipping pages. But it took us a good 3-4 minutes, because there is humor, and story, and imagery, and detail, and inner mental life all in this poem, and we wanted to taste and recognize each of those elements.
It is no easy feat to hold the attention of kindergarteners in the front row when you’re reading a poem like that, with no pictures and no real action. But it seemed to work. Sometimes the words are enough - when you’re licking them like an ice cream cone.
The Power of Patience
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January 11. Friday evening. “I’m tired of that stupid book.” My eight-year-old daughter, reluctant to continue with the Golden Compass, which we had started over Christmas.
February 29. Friday afternoon. “Papa, would could you read a little Golden Compass.” This, as she lay in the bathroom, amid towels and pillows, having left school early, having thrown up, still queasy and weak and wary of throwing up again. A very timid endorsement, perhaps succumbing because of her nauseous weakness.
March 3. Monday morning. My daughter is white as a ghost, listening to the penultimate chapter of Part 2 (Bolvangar). She stares straight ahead, beyond rapt, petrified of what may occur in one of the scariest and ominous passages we have ever read aloud. (To a parent, monitoring the vicarious reactions of children-listeners, it is a memorable, all-time moment.)
March 4. Tuesday evening. “Papa, keep reading! Don’t stop! Come on, Iorek Byrnison!” This, amid the last chapter of Part 2, of the Golden Compass. To a parent, these are the golden words you want to hear, that mean your child is hooked, that mean you have done the right thing carving and creating and preserving the time to read.
And in this case, it means that I was a) right to put the book away on the shelf for a month (maybe forever), and b) right to attempt the book in the first place, content in my parental confidence that something that began slow would eventually thrill and entertain.
These are essential and valuable principles to understand and remember about reading aloud to your children. But easy to forget or lose sight of amid the challenges of parenting and the complexities and tensions of our lives.
1) It’s right to challenge them. In our case, my eight-year-old wanted to read the Golden Compass, not because her older sisters had, but because she wanted to see the movie. (And we have a strict rule in our family: If the movie comes from a worthwhile work of literature, you have to read the book first. No shortcuts short-changing the long-term value of literature.)
2) It’s OK to put a book down. One is always reluctant - and often feel guilty - but it’s vital that reading aloud not be a forced thing. If a book isn’t working, then continuing to read it can negatively re-inforce the impression of reading aloud as boring, drudgery, forced. Figuring out when is the trick. At the very least, you’ve got to finish the first chapter to get used to an author’s prose style. (Modeling that kind of patience is beneficial for your child.) And some books don’t start off with a bang, even if they have varied pleasures further in. But if you’ve finished a defined chunk of the book - in this case Part 1, 150+ pages - it’s OK to acknowledge, perhaps this isn’t the right book, or the right time for this book.
3) ‘Father knows best.’ But usually - unless the book is brand new to the parent reader, too - a parent does know what pleasures lurk deeper inside a book. And a parent has the patience to soldier on through a section that feels or seems slower to a child. No book is perfect. But the lesson here is that it is worth persevering until your listener is hooked. You can’t overuse the notion of “just one more chapter” or you lose your credibility. But it’s prudent and wise to offer a little carrot or reward to reach a milestone while you’re letting a book work it’s patient magic.
In the case of the Golden Compass it took longer than I thought. But two sections (and 300 pages) in - with two more books to complete the trilogy - I am sure we were right and our patience has been rewarded. It’s worth remembering, as a parent reader, that a child doesn’t need to be perfectly, 100% fulfilled or satisfied every second of every reading experience. A little unsatisfied curiosity, a little impatience, these are normal and necessary to appreciating the value of any experience - a movie, a baseball game, a hike. And it’s worth remembering as parents that we have the patience to share and bestow on our children to wait for the part that hooks you.