From: Esme Raji Codell <esme>
Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 01:48:40 -0500

Oh, good grief! What an amazing thread! It's like opening a candy box every time the e-mail comes in, I have so enjoyed reading about people's experiences with read-aloud. I can't resist joining in...

I have fond memories of my father's expressive readings of Huckleberry Finn to my class when he was my fourth grade teacher, and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator in bed at night. I loved when my mother would sit in the big chair in the kitchen, smoking her cigarettes, and read me the strange and sexy stories from The New Yorker, thinking I was special enough to share what she personally enjoyed, explaining why this or that sentence or description was so particularly wonderful.

One of my favorite read-alouds when I taught fifth grade was a translation of the Polish classic King Matt the First by Janusz Korczak, about a boy king who is left to rule a country when he father dies. In parts of Europe it is as popular as Peter Pan, but it's a lot more obscure here; I'm so happy that it is being reissued this fall. I love reading Andrew Clements' Big Al, and insisting to the children that the middle of the story is "the end," and them arguing with me until I continue, until I agree that an unhappy ending can't possibly be the end. On the other hand, I love reading aloud Hans Andersen's ?Little Match Girl? with its tragic finale, consoling the children by bringing her back to life with a repeat reading. I love reading The Polar Express to first graders, shaking a bell at the end and watching them celebrate that they are still child enough to hear it. I love Roald Dahl's The Twits, Bill Brittain's The Wish Giver, Demi's The Empty Pot and her more recent Hungry Coat, Paul Galdone's rendition of The Gingerbread Man, Jonathan London's Froggy Gets Dressed, Bernard Waber's Ira Sleeps Over. The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse by Ursula Moray Williams is such a sleeper, but has some of the most cliffhanging chapters I have ever read. Some of my favorite experiences have been reading to older kids. I loved reading Rudyard Kipling's "Mowgli's Brothers" to the eighth grade boys being recruited by gangs, and watching their faces as it dawned on them that it was Mowgli's tears that really made him a man. I love trying not to cry in front of the children at the end of Eleanor Estes's The Hundred Dresses, or Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and the fact that I can't help it. I love chanting David McCord's poem "The Pickety Fence," and there is great non-fiction, too, as Armin Arethra mentioned, like Patrick O'Brien's Megatooth, or the great wealth of picture book biography available, as Kathleen Krull's Harvesting Hope exemplified. Jean Fritz is a master at bringing American history to life and giving forefathers a human face. (More of my favorite read-alouds, especially suitable for intermediate kids, are posted at my website http://www.planetesme.com, under the heading
?Read-Aloud Resuscitation.?)

Kay Winters is telling it true in her post; I, too, run into so many educators who say they don't have time to read aloud. It really shocks me. When it comes to education, read-aloud was my religion, and it still is. I don't know how I could have ever taught if I didn't read aloud. Getting through a book with a class that starts out rowdy and ends up quiet and listening and waiting is an exercise in faith, and doing it daily did everything to feed my belief in authors and illustrators to deliver the best of the world to children, and that every child can receive and learn. I counted on read-aloud to build community. I counted on it for character education. I counted on it for every basic skill and life lesson that I hoped to share. I think read-aloud is about teachers having the chance to bring to the classroom what they think is important, what they value, what they want to share and discuss, not just what is mandated. I hope teachers will prioritize their own leadership and be proactive in determining what is most important in their day.

Two final thoughts: Once, I asked the children to write their reading life stories. One little girl who lost her mother to AIDS wrote hers in the form of a letter, about how her mother would read to her and how she missed it.
"My grandmother try's to tell me but theres not enough time. I would like to here from my teacher's. My mom youst to tell me some story's but now she gone and I can't see hear anymore but if you read to me she'll stay alive in my heart." I know her "see hear" was some invented spelling, but isn't it true, with read-aloud, we can see what we hear? And I always think of her letter to remind myself of the enormous emotional connection that is brought about by read-aloud, and that it really is an act of love, as a mother or father would give to a child. Read-aloud isn't just about the skill of reading, its about a grown-up making time for a child, and giving that child attention. Its amazing that we can step in to do that for any child, not just our own.

But my own is the one that stars in my favorite read-aloud memory. Thanks to a flexible work schedule, I had visited my son's classroom to read aloud every week for almost a year when he was in the second grade. One particular week, I had a terrible sinus infection and was nearly choking by the time I got to the third page of (what happened to be) Kay Winters' Abe Lincoln: Boy Who Loved Books. My son noticed I was struggling and discreetly got up and said, "let me take over." I thanked him but resisted, because there were over thirty kids in the room and I wasn't sure if he would have enough command. But he pulled the book out of my hands, held it up so the children could see the pictures, turned his head sideways to read and proceeded with the most amazing "Kentucky accent" I had ever heard. Even his teacher stopped grading papers to join the circle and the laughter. He had learned sight vocabulary thanks to nightly read-alouds from Johanna Hurwitz?s ?Riverside Kids? series, but this was something different. It made me think of Becky Bloom's book Wolf!, in which a wolf learns the hard way that reading isn't about sounding out words. It's about sharing a story with others. The day my son read-aloud to his class was the day we both realized he was a real reader.

Thanks for reading this far!

Best, Esme Raji Codell Site Director Author, How to Get Your Child to Love Reading and Sahara Special

Visit PlanetEsme.com: A Www.onderful World of Children?s Literature!? http://www.planetesme.com P.O. Box 6225 Evanston, IL 60204 For reviews of the best and brightest new books, http://www.planetesme.com/dontmiss.html
Received on Sat 07 Aug 2004 01:48:40 AM CDT