Reading Aloud

A friend of ours from college recently (3/15/07) posted on her blog about her memories of her mom reading aloud to her as a child, and the joy of reading to her own children now. She mentioned several books and then asked her readers what books made their mark on them in childhood. This exploded into quite a few comments as people remembered wonderful books and experiences. As I posted there, I could talk about this topic all day long! My mom read to us out loud every night. We read the Little House series, Anne of Green Gables series, Wild Violets by Phyllis Green, James and Giant Peach, Stone Fox (this is a serious tear-jerker!), Where the Red Fern Grows, The Boxcar Children series, and many others. See her post comments for other ideas! My mom let my sisters and I comb, play, and "fix" her hair while we listened. Wonderful memories and wonderful books! I also had a teacher who read The Westing Game to us--I highly recommend this one, as well. Many of the titles my mom chose to read to us came from The Read-Aloud Handbook: Fifth Edition (Read-Aloud Handbook) by Jim Trelease. The book itself talks about the benefits of reading aloud, the do's and don'ts, etc. The real treasure, in my opinion, is the book list in the back. It is so exciting to me to read aloud to my kids. I am as excited as Ainsley is when we bring home new library books, and we aren't even into any of the ones I mentioned above yet!