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Reading alouds and audiobooks
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From: Hopkinson, Deborah <Deborah.Hopkinson>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 08:41:08 -0700
And, speaking of great readalouds, as someone who is commuting 6 hours home most weekends from my new job, one of recent favorites is AL CAPONE DOES MY SHIRTS. What a wonderful book. I knew a bit about Alcatraz from having written an article about it for Storyworks magazine last year, and that familiarity made this warm, funny, and poignant novel even more meaningful. Great read and a great listen!
Deborah Hopkinson
-----Original Message----From: Gennifer Choldenko [mailto:choldenko at earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2004 8:02 AM To: 'Steven Engelfried'; 'Subscribers of ccbc-net' Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] Reading alouds and audiobooks
I have to agree with Steven Engelfried when he posted about "a different kind of shared experience," through audio books. My kids adore audio books. We listen to them in the car - from the moment seat buckles are snapped, to the moment they are unsnapped. I suggest talking now and then. I am voted down every time. How can ordinary conversation compete with Jim Dale? We've worn out our local library collection, and find ourselves traveling to new libraries in search of new audio books. But at our house audio books stay in the car. Inside our house we read or read aloud. We read aloud at bed time of course. But also at skinned knee time. At fighting with your brother time. At afraid to go to camp time. Reading aloud is relaxing, it breaks the tension of the moment, it calms us down, and helps both me and my kids to be ready to talk about whatever is bothering us. I'd like to tell you I have the right books for all these occasions, but I don't. I read whatever is handy, whatever we're in the middle of, whatever I have a yen for, whatever my kids want to hear right then. The only "real" crisis at our house is when I get laryngitis. Then my daughter goes off to find OPERA CAT by Tess Weaver and I whisper the laryngitis scenes to her.
Gennifer Choldenko
AL CAPONE DOES MY SHIRTS
-----Original Message---- From: Steven Engelfried
[mailto:sengelfried at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 5:03 PM
To: Subscribers of ccbc-net
Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] Reading alouds and audiobooks
I enjoyed Maia Cheli-Colando's funny post about her husband's Absolutely Amazing Voices. I still think a good book doesn't need a great reader, just an interested one, but great is even better. My teenage kids and I listened to Heather Alicia Simms' wonderful reading of "Make Lemonade" by Virginia Euwer Wolff, then I felt very ordinary by comparison when I read "True Believers" to them out loud. But the writing was still perfect, and we have a different kind of s hared experience the second way. I'm curious how families view read alouds and audio books. In a way, audiobooks demonstrate the pleasure of a shared family reading experience (I'm thinking of the long?r-trip-where-everyone-listens experience, not of one child listening on a walkman). So they should encourage the family to also read aloud at home. But maybe the opposite happens: the parent thinks that you need to be Tim Curry or Jim Dale to make a book come alive. Or do some think that an audio book in the car makes reading aloud less important? Not that I have anything against audiobooks, which I love, but I do wonder if there is an impact of audio books on family read alouds...
- Steven Engelfried, Beaverton City Library (OR)
sengelfried at yahoo.com
Maia Cheli-Colando wrote:
CCBCers,
Confession: my husband reads Pooh much better than I.
I am the writer in our house.* In my youth, I was in theatre.&nbs p; Nowadays, I read as much "children's lit" as "adult" literature. The Pooh book we read is in fact MY book that I bought as an adult, entirely for my own enjoyment. (Though since two, my daughter has nearly co-opted it.) I have all the right qualifications! And I do read Pooh well.
But Kevin reads it much better than I.
It's not that he has a deeper understanding of story. And I clearly have him well beat on nonfiction books, which he rarely reads to he r. But his voices are Absolutely Amazing.
I hold Kevin's father completely responsible for this. Apparently, he had Voices too. He read Pooh to his sons, and the imprint that left is so deep that when Kevin reads Eeyore, he is the only Eeyore I can imagine. If I am fixedly working in the other room and I catch only a whisper of Rabbit, I am lost. There is no point in working any longer; I just sit and listen.
Fortunately, many of the book s we have bought are newer titles, and I am not constantly subjected to the mesmerizing effect of generations of Pooh Voice. And too, old or new books, they have to be real Characters for it to work; poetry, history or myth do not bring out the soun d.
But I am nervous, because soon my daughter will be old enough for Oz. I have heard rumours of Kevin's father, Jim, reading Oz. I can only imagine what it will do to hear Jack Pumpkinhead or Tik-Tok or the Nome King. I will be l ost. I will have to send out an "on vacation" notice, and return when Oz is past. Forty books or more!
Maia
* I am "the writer" only for now... my five year old is gaining ground rapidly, and reads voraciously.
Maia Cheli-Colando
maia at littlefolktales.org
www.littlefolktales.org /reviews
________________________________
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Received on Mon 16 Aug 2004 10:41:08 AM CDT
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 08:41:08 -0700
And, speaking of great readalouds, as someone who is commuting 6 hours home most weekends from my new job, one of recent favorites is AL CAPONE DOES MY SHIRTS. What a wonderful book. I knew a bit about Alcatraz from having written an article about it for Storyworks magazine last year, and that familiarity made this warm, funny, and poignant novel even more meaningful. Great read and a great listen!
Deborah Hopkinson
-----Original Message----From: Gennifer Choldenko [mailto:choldenko at earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2004 8:02 AM To: 'Steven Engelfried'; 'Subscribers of ccbc-net' Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] Reading alouds and audiobooks
I have to agree with Steven Engelfried when he posted about "a different kind of shared experience," through audio books. My kids adore audio books. We listen to them in the car - from the moment seat buckles are snapped, to the moment they are unsnapped. I suggest talking now and then. I am voted down every time. How can ordinary conversation compete with Jim Dale? We've worn out our local library collection, and find ourselves traveling to new libraries in search of new audio books. But at our house audio books stay in the car. Inside our house we read or read aloud. We read aloud at bed time of course. But also at skinned knee time. At fighting with your brother time. At afraid to go to camp time. Reading aloud is relaxing, it breaks the tension of the moment, it calms us down, and helps both me and my kids to be ready to talk about whatever is bothering us. I'd like to tell you I have the right books for all these occasions, but I don't. I read whatever is handy, whatever we're in the middle of, whatever I have a yen for, whatever my kids want to hear right then. The only "real" crisis at our house is when I get laryngitis. Then my daughter goes off to find OPERA CAT by Tess Weaver and I whisper the laryngitis scenes to her.
Gennifer Choldenko
AL CAPONE DOES MY SHIRTS
-----Original Message---- From: Steven Engelfried
[mailto:sengelfried at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 5:03 PM
To: Subscribers of ccbc-net
Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] Reading alouds and audiobooks
I enjoyed Maia Cheli-Colando's funny post about her husband's Absolutely Amazing Voices. I still think a good book doesn't need a great reader, just an interested one, but great is even better. My teenage kids and I listened to Heather Alicia Simms' wonderful reading of "Make Lemonade" by Virginia Euwer Wolff, then I felt very ordinary by comparison when I read "True Believers" to them out loud. But the writing was still perfect, and we have a different kind of s hared experience the second way. I'm curious how families view read alouds and audio books. In a way, audiobooks demonstrate the pleasure of a shared family reading experience (I'm thinking of the long?r-trip-where-everyone-listens experience, not of one child listening on a walkman). So they should encourage the family to also read aloud at home. But maybe the opposite happens: the parent thinks that you need to be Tim Curry or Jim Dale to make a book come alive. Or do some think that an audio book in the car makes reading aloud less important? Not that I have anything against audiobooks, which I love, but I do wonder if there is an impact of audio books on family read alouds...
- Steven Engelfried, Beaverton City Library (OR)
sengelfried at yahoo.com
Maia Cheli-Colando wrote:
CCBCers,
Confession: my husband reads Pooh much better than I.
I am the writer in our house.* In my youth, I was in theatre.&nbs p; Nowadays, I read as much "children's lit" as "adult" literature. The Pooh book we read is in fact MY book that I bought as an adult, entirely for my own enjoyment. (Though since two, my daughter has nearly co-opted it.) I have all the right qualifications! And I do read Pooh well.
But Kevin reads it much better than I.
It's not that he has a deeper understanding of story. And I clearly have him well beat on nonfiction books, which he rarely reads to he r. But his voices are Absolutely Amazing.
I hold Kevin's father completely responsible for this. Apparently, he had Voices too. He read Pooh to his sons, and the imprint that left is so deep that when Kevin reads Eeyore, he is the only Eeyore I can imagine. If I am fixedly working in the other room and I catch only a whisper of Rabbit, I am lost. There is no point in working any longer; I just sit and listen.
Fortunately, many of the book s we have bought are newer titles, and I am not constantly subjected to the mesmerizing effect of generations of Pooh Voice. And too, old or new books, they have to be real Characters for it to work; poetry, history or myth do not bring out the soun d.
But I am nervous, because soon my daughter will be old enough for Oz. I have heard rumours of Kevin's father, Jim, reading Oz. I can only imagine what it will do to hear Jack Pumpkinhead or Tik-Tok or the Nome King. I will be l ost. I will have to send out an "on vacation" notice, and return when Oz is past. Forty books or more!
Maia
* I am "the writer" only for now... my five year old is gaining ground rapidly, and reads voraciously.
Maia Cheli-Colando
maia at littlefolktales.org
www.littlefolktales.org /reviews
________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail new_mail/static/efficiency.html> - Send 10MB messages!
Received on Mon 16 Aug 2004 10:41:08 AM CDT
