Family Summer Reading

My son Tom recently 'complained' that I do not read to him. (He was apparently too young when I did read to him to remember now that I used to read to him.)

This gnawed at me. I always envisioned being the kind of mother who read to her children. Over the years I've started many books with them (Five Little Peppers and How they Grew, Cheaper by the Dozen, Charlotte's Web, Treasure Island...) only to abandon them when interest began to wane. I sulked for a couple of weeks, then went to the bookstore to buy a book I have always wanted to read: The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne. I will be reading this book aloud to my children in command performance fashion every evening until we've finished it.

We started reading about Pooh's adventures last night. Tom, age 16, the one who complained that I never read to him, tried to get out of it. "You have to listen," I said. "I can't have you growing up thinking I never read to you!" So he lounged on the sofa while Abby crocheted, Scott and Emily sat quietly, and I read.

Tom interrupted after the first page or two to complain about the writer's style, but I assured him the book is a classic. A few pages after that, we all chuckled at something Pooh said to Piglet. I held the book open to show them pictures in the beam of lamplight and we were all charmed. So far, so good. We're all looking forward to Chapter Two this evening.

So my message to any mothers out there who fear they've missed the boat on reading to their children: it's never too late. (It's certainly easier if they're still in the house, however.) The main thing for me is sharing my love of literature with them and teaching them that books can be as entertaining as video games and movies, even more so.

And I want to put in a plug for listening to books on tape or CD. On a fantastic car trip from Utah to Hannibal, Mo. in 2000 we listened to Tom Sawyer going and Huck Finn coming home. I could never have read it as well as the narrator of those tapes, who was a master of 500 voices (like Jim Dale of Harry Potter CD fame.) We laughed all the way there and all the way home and while on our vacation, touring Injun Joe's cave was particularly exciting because we had just heard the tale. One summer we listened to lesser known kids' books as we ran errands around town and polished off several books that way. Even Taylor, who was less inclined to read novels, enjoyed hearing those, which I selected to match his interests.