Bedtime stories (ENGL 338)

So, I'm late to this discussion (sinus infections are just the worst for productivity) but I've been thinking about not necessarily my own reading experiences with my parents, but the ones that I have with my nephews who are probably my favorite people in the world.

Getting to read to my nephews is something I look forward to whenever I see them. I don't exactly know what it is about reading to them, but it is something special. But, reading to a child is so much more than just reading the words on the page. You use different voices to make characters come alive, different inflections to express mood, but most importantly you use the pictures to help the story become more interactive.

Many books that I've read to my nephews ask the reader to find something. Maybe its a mouse hidden on the page or trying to find 9 oranges. Or, you can pose the question yourself, "What is this?" you might ask, pointing to a dog. "What color is it?" The child will (hopefully) answer "a dog" and "brown". It is something so simple, but it is education at its most basic level. The child shows that they know what a dog is or what the color brown looks like and can relay that to you. (This becomes not so fun when you read them a book that they've seen 30 times and have pointed to the mouse before you can say, "do you see a mouse?")

So, while it is true as was said in class that nobody's family talks like a textbook, simply reading to a child helps facilitate the educational process. The child knows what to look for and how to answer a question, and that can give them a head start when they enter a classroom for the first time.