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.]