Chapter books and reading out loud
I realized that while I write a lot about reading out loud to my children, and share many of the books we've read together, I have never (so far as my cursory search effort tells me) actually written about the actual idea of reading out loud. It's time to remedy that.
If you've spent more than a couple of minutes here, you will know that I am an avid reader and that I enjoy sharing books with my children. We read together a lot. We started when M. was an infant, and never stopped. I read out loud during school time, at some point in the middle of the day (it started out as a lunch time reading session, and eventually turned into a tea time one), and we read to people at night. That's at least three different books going at the same time, though J. usually has at least two chapter books he is reading from at night, so more often it is five. This does not include all the books which my children read to themselves. All total, that is a lot of words and a lot of stories. We've read to babies, toddlers, elementary, middle, and high school aged children, sometimes all at the same time. This isn't meant to brag, but to point out, the following observations are based on thousands of hours and hundreds of books being read out loud.
There's a lot I could write, but for now I want to focus on just one of the many benefits of reading out loud. One of the very best things reading out loud to your children can do is to expose them to books which they won't be able to read on their own for a very long time.
Children's listening skills develop faster than their reading skills. With some practice, this means that the books they can listen to, understand, and enjoy is enormous. I'm talking real books here, not pulp middle grade fiction or series books. They have their place, but in my opinion, their place is not to be read out loud. I will admit to dying a little inside, every time I see a parent ask for read aloud book recommendations, and other parents chime in with Magic Schoolhouse, Boxcar Children, or Wimpy Kid. (I would die a lot faster if I ever had to purposefully read one out loud.) This was not why these books were written. They were written for intermediate readers to read on their own, and enjoy, nurturing a love of reading. And they do that very well. They are predictable and easily digested, just what that age needs.
What a lost opportunity for a parent to read out loud something the child will quickly be able to read to him or herself instead of offering something of substance. "But I want my child to enjoy books; I don't want him to be bored with something he can't understand!" is often the reply. So don't pick a boring book. Just because a book has strong vocabulary, complex sentence structure, and ideas, does not mean it has to be boring. Just the opposite, in fact. Good writing, in fact, can actually make for a more exciting story because it draws you in. Strong characters, a well-planned plot, and intriguing descriptions are what keep readers interested. Predictable and easy will get boring; strong writing will not.
So do I think you should read your two year old Dickens? No, of course not. I think you should wait until they are three. I'm only partially joking here. When TM and D. were three years old, our children's theater group decided to put on their first musical, Oliver! It was a family affair. The four oldest children were in the production, I was rehearsing the musical numbers, and J. was Fagin. That left the two youngest to tag along when everyone was needed. That spring, we drove to Arizona to visit my family, and I decided since we were so involved with the musical, it would be good for the older children to listen to the novel, Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, so they could be familiar with it. So we spent most of the driving time of that trip listening to the book. Everyone enjoyed it and got caught up in the story. While the three year olds didn't quite grasp it, (and certainly no TM, since he had been home for a very little while), they heard the words, caught some of the story, and had hours of listening to the rhythm of complex sentences.
Something to remember is that listening is a skill; something to be developed. For a child who has been read to since she was a baby, jumping to chapter books is not terribly difficult. Without those early years of practice, of listening to stories and seeing the pictures, jumping into chapter books will be a little more difficult. Don't start with Dickens in that case, but also don't sell you or your child short. Choose a book because it is something you want to read or because it is about something you are interested in. Non-fiction should also be a part of a child's read aloud history. Some of our very favorite books have been non-fiction. (Kon Tiki and Wesley the Owl are two that leap to mind immediately.)
Before I go into a little bit how I move a child from solely picture books to chapter books, I want to talk a little bit about language and older books. One of our favorite books as a family is Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. It is a wonderful story about a group of siblings who come upon a sand fairy, or Psammead, who agrees to grant the children one wish every day. One of the best parts of the book is how the wishes actually play out, which is quite different from how the children imagine them working. It was written in 1902, and our language has changed quite a bit since then. It often takes a chapter for whichever new set of children we're reading this to, to get the hang of the language. That first chapter often involves one of us reading some of it, and then stopping for a moment to interpret what is happening in the story. As children get the idea of who the characters are, and what the gist of the story is about, their ears tune into the language, and it ceases to be an issue. Sometimes it takes a while, and involves a little help at the beginning. These books (there are two sequals, as well as many other books E. Nesbit wrote), are so wonderful that it is worth the extra effort. Plus our excitement about them communicates itself to the children who trust us enough to keep slogging through the beginning acclimation process.
So how do we take our children from picture books to something like E. Nesbit? It's all a matter of practice. After a child can easily sit through and understand a fairly long picture book, I know they are ready. This is somewhere between 3 and 5, depending on the child. My very favorite book for bridging the gap is The Jeremy Mouse Book by Patricia M. Scarry and Hilary Knight. This is a lovely book that is broken into very short chapters. Each chapter has one illustration, but there is a lot more going on in the story than is illustrated. (I'm sure there are many other books like this, but I happen to love this one. It is sadly out of print, though. If you find one, snatch it up.) We read one or two chapters at night, putting in a bookmark to mark our place. I also make a big deal about the child being ready to listen to chapter books.
If the child enjoyed Jeremy Mouse and is clamoring for more, then I move on to the two Winnie-the-Pooh books. These books actually have fairly sophisticated language, but because the characters and some of the stories are so familiar, it makes them manageable. Plus, I adore them. They are hilarious to read, with a humor that is often lost on children. If you have never actually read the books, you should. The Pooh books have illustrations, but the bulk of the story is carried by the text and requires a lot of just listening. If the child can do that, then I figure they are ready to listen to just about anything, though I do start slowly. My younger children by this time, have also been listening to school books being read as well as whatever we were reading at lunch or teatime. They are well primed.
From there, the sky's the limit. The more you read, they better they understand, so you can read more, and they understand more.
If you've spent more than a couple of minutes here, you will know that I am an avid reader and that I enjoy sharing books with my children. We read together a lot. We started when M. was an infant, and never stopped. I read out loud during school time, at some point in the middle of the day (it started out as a lunch time reading session, and eventually turned into a tea time one), and we read to people at night. That's at least three different books going at the same time, though J. usually has at least two chapter books he is reading from at night, so more often it is five. This does not include all the books which my children read to themselves. All total, that is a lot of words and a lot of stories. We've read to babies, toddlers, elementary, middle, and high school aged children, sometimes all at the same time. This isn't meant to brag, but to point out, the following observations are based on thousands of hours and hundreds of books being read out loud.
There's a lot I could write, but for now I want to focus on just one of the many benefits of reading out loud. One of the very best things reading out loud to your children can do is to expose them to books which they won't be able to read on their own for a very long time.
Children's listening skills develop faster than their reading skills. With some practice, this means that the books they can listen to, understand, and enjoy is enormous. I'm talking real books here, not pulp middle grade fiction or series books. They have their place, but in my opinion, their place is not to be read out loud. I will admit to dying a little inside, every time I see a parent ask for read aloud book recommendations, and other parents chime in with Magic Schoolhouse, Boxcar Children, or Wimpy Kid. (I would die a lot faster if I ever had to purposefully read one out loud.) This was not why these books were written. They were written for intermediate readers to read on their own, and enjoy, nurturing a love of reading. And they do that very well. They are predictable and easily digested, just what that age needs.
What a lost opportunity for a parent to read out loud something the child will quickly be able to read to him or herself instead of offering something of substance. "But I want my child to enjoy books; I don't want him to be bored with something he can't understand!" is often the reply. So don't pick a boring book. Just because a book has strong vocabulary, complex sentence structure, and ideas, does not mean it has to be boring. Just the opposite, in fact. Good writing, in fact, can actually make for a more exciting story because it draws you in. Strong characters, a well-planned plot, and intriguing descriptions are what keep readers interested. Predictable and easy will get boring; strong writing will not.
So do I think you should read your two year old Dickens? No, of course not. I think you should wait until they are three. I'm only partially joking here. When TM and D. were three years old, our children's theater group decided to put on their first musical, Oliver! It was a family affair. The four oldest children were in the production, I was rehearsing the musical numbers, and J. was Fagin. That left the two youngest to tag along when everyone was needed. That spring, we drove to Arizona to visit my family, and I decided since we were so involved with the musical, it would be good for the older children to listen to the novel, Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, so they could be familiar with it. So we spent most of the driving time of that trip listening to the book. Everyone enjoyed it and got caught up in the story. While the three year olds didn't quite grasp it, (and certainly no TM, since he had been home for a very little while), they heard the words, caught some of the story, and had hours of listening to the rhythm of complex sentences.
Something to remember is that listening is a skill; something to be developed. For a child who has been read to since she was a baby, jumping to chapter books is not terribly difficult. Without those early years of practice, of listening to stories and seeing the pictures, jumping into chapter books will be a little more difficult. Don't start with Dickens in that case, but also don't sell you or your child short. Choose a book because it is something you want to read or because it is about something you are interested in. Non-fiction should also be a part of a child's read aloud history. Some of our very favorite books have been non-fiction. (Kon Tiki and Wesley the Owl are two that leap to mind immediately.)
Before I go into a little bit how I move a child from solely picture books to chapter books, I want to talk a little bit about language and older books. One of our favorite books as a family is Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. It is a wonderful story about a group of siblings who come upon a sand fairy, or Psammead, who agrees to grant the children one wish every day. One of the best parts of the book is how the wishes actually play out, which is quite different from how the children imagine them working. It was written in 1902, and our language has changed quite a bit since then. It often takes a chapter for whichever new set of children we're reading this to, to get the hang of the language. That first chapter often involves one of us reading some of it, and then stopping for a moment to interpret what is happening in the story. As children get the idea of who the characters are, and what the gist of the story is about, their ears tune into the language, and it ceases to be an issue. Sometimes it takes a while, and involves a little help at the beginning. These books (there are two sequals, as well as many other books E. Nesbit wrote), are so wonderful that it is worth the extra effort. Plus our excitement about them communicates itself to the children who trust us enough to keep slogging through the beginning acclimation process.
So how do we take our children from picture books to something like E. Nesbit? It's all a matter of practice. After a child can easily sit through and understand a fairly long picture book, I know they are ready. This is somewhere between 3 and 5, depending on the child. My very favorite book for bridging the gap is The Jeremy Mouse Book by Patricia M. Scarry and Hilary Knight. This is a lovely book that is broken into very short chapters. Each chapter has one illustration, but there is a lot more going on in the story than is illustrated. (I'm sure there are many other books like this, but I happen to love this one. It is sadly out of print, though. If you find one, snatch it up.) We read one or two chapters at night, putting in a bookmark to mark our place. I also make a big deal about the child being ready to listen to chapter books.
If the child enjoyed Jeremy Mouse and is clamoring for more, then I move on to the two Winnie-the-Pooh books. These books actually have fairly sophisticated language, but because the characters and some of the stories are so familiar, it makes them manageable. Plus, I adore them. They are hilarious to read, with a humor that is often lost on children. If you have never actually read the books, you should. The Pooh books have illustrations, but the bulk of the story is carried by the text and requires a lot of just listening. If the child can do that, then I figure they are ready to listen to just about anything, though I do start slowly. My younger children by this time, have also been listening to school books being read as well as whatever we were reading at lunch or teatime. They are well primed.
From there, the sky's the limit. The more you read, they better they understand, so you can read more, and they understand more.
Comments
Some parents just don't like to read aloud themselves or feel they aren't good at it. There are so many wonderful audiobooks available now that a family could use that as an alternative. Many libraries will even let you stream an audiobook from home, so you don't have to leave your house to pick up CDs.