Reading Aloud

Josie's expression says a lot about my feelings about Izzy's last book assignment, Lord of the Flies.

Since September Izzy and I have been reading aloud her required reading for school, and I am becoming a firm believer in the power of reading aloud. Izzy is taking her time and reading a lot slower now (very little comma and period neglect is going on) and not stumbling over so many of the words. We also stop often and have discussions about what we're reading. She's improved tremendously since we began reading together in September. I also have a better grasp of what foreshadowing is, which has been a humorous battle for this English major.

I cried my way through our first book, The Glass Castle while Izzy struggled to take everything in, her face a contorted puzzle the entire way through the book. I relished the metaphor-heavy Fahrenheit 451 while Izzy patiently waited for me to repeat every blessed phrase I loved. Catcher in the Rye resonated with Izzy and she connected with Holden Caulfield in a way I didn't know possible. Lord of the Flies has been the toughest for me. I read it last year or the year before with Rachel and loathed every second of it. I remember clearly the overwhelming joy of being done with it for what I thought was forever. I was horrified to learn it was one of Izzy's books this year, and not only that, it was her first time annotating, which meant that we'd be annotating it together. Annotating is a pain in the butt, but has really helped us talk about sentence structure, which is something Izzy struggles with. And if I'm going to be honest, sentence structure and I have never been close bosom buddies (this sentence alone took three rewrites). Annotating has also helped both of us read more critically. Not super helpful in my current job, where a big part of it is devoted to devouring all the children's books of the world and talking animatedly about everything but foreshadowing. I am imagining a reader's advisory interaction about say, The Babysitter's Club, and how a young reader would look at me if I started talking about foreshadowing.  But no matter, I'm sure my newfound skills of reading more critically will be called upon at some point in my future (just like mitosis and meiosis and the quadratic equation). 

Because reading together for school has been such a success, I chose a self-help book for teens to read with Izzy and we've been working our way through that as well. Reading aloud with her has made me wonder why we don't read aloud with our loved ones more often. Or perhaps other families do this and I'm just not aware of it. Sometimes, while Izzy and I read together, I notice our large house grow smaller and smaller until it is just our first floor living space. First, the dogs find us and settle in close. Oftentimes Robert will meander in, ever so quietly, and settle into a chair nearby with his work. Rachel has even magically appeared a couple times, setting up her homework at the dining room table. It probably helps she's a sucker for distractions and has the official title of The World's Most Renown Critic of High School Literature, and Really All Literature That is Ever So Beneath Her (this title permits her to interject a snarky comment ever now and then). Each time I look up from the book there's another family member sitting in the room with us. I keep expecting to spot Robert's mom, Audrey, who lives across the street, slowly making her way across the street, utterly transfixed by the sound of Izzy and I stumbling through words like "multitudinous" and "propitiatingly."

There's something magical about reading aloud with someone you love. I don't know what kind of voodoo magic it is yet, but every day I'm adding new words to my vocabulary, and it's possible some day I'll have all the right kind of words to figure it out.