From: JOAN ATKINSON <Jatkinso>
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:27:12 -0600

Like Carolyn Gabb, I read aloud to students in my university classes, most of whom are preparing for careers in librarianship and occasionally classroom teaching. I think we all enjoy the experience of sharing a book together orally.

I'll talk about just two of the books I especially enjoy using. One is Patricia Polocco's Thank You, Mr. Falker. I read it when the class topic is encouraging children's personality development through reading. It's an autobiographical story of the difficulties Polacco had learning to read when she wanted to be a reader more than almost anything else. After years in which teachers did not recognize the problem, Mr. Falker pays attention and gets the kind of help that enables her to read. Many years later, as an adult Polacco meets Mr. Falker again and has the opportunity to thank him. By the end of the book, my voice is breaking with emotion and there's sniffling and blowing of noses around the class. We are all moved, I think, by the poignant realization of how important our work is, or can be, in the life of a child or children in school, especially those who may be the brunt of jokes and put-downs because of a reading or other difficulty.

Another favorite read aloud is Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present by Charlotte Zolotow. It is the most perfect book I know to encourage intellectual development of young children. After reading it, the class discusses the thinking processes used here, which are those Joan Glazer mentions in her early childhood literature textbook: observing, hypothesizing, comparing, classifying, organizing and applying. Having examples of all those in one concise book is truly amazing to my way of thinking. And to young children the book is just fun, not a learning exercise.

In the children's literature classes I require Jim Trelease's The Read Aloud Handbook as one of the first reading assignments students do. In dozen of cases I have had students write in their journals or tell me in person that they wish they had had that book when their own children were little or when they first became a teacher or librarian. It would make so much difference if they'd realized how important reading aloud was.

Twenty-five years ago when I first began teaching the children's literature class, it was not unusual for me to have librarians and teachers say that their principals would not allow them to read aloud, that it was considered not being "on task" to be reading to children instead of teaching them to read. I hardly ever hear that complaint now. Here in Alabama, our national test scores were often low in the area of listening skills, and I think that may be the way librarians and teachers "sold" reading aloud to their principals. I appreciate the fact that Jim Trelease's book is filled with research studies written in a way that principals as well as parents can easily read and understand them. I find his book inspriational and persuasive.

Joan Atkinson Joan L. Atkinson Associate Professor School of Library and Information Studies The University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, AL 3548752 e-mail: jatkinso at slis.ua.edu Phone: 20548F10 or 2054822 FAX: 20548746
Received on Thu 19 Aug 2004 06:27:12 PM CDT