Cradle and Candlelight

When the children were very small, reading was our bedtime ritual for them. Reading to babies is wonderful because parents get to choose whatever they like. Al read from the Shakespearean canon—I read the Betsy-Tacy canon.

As our children grew a little older, however, the first difficulties arose. We wanted to read Winnie-the-Pooh, they wanted to hear The Little Engine That Could for the 783rd time. Of course, we would again and again be compelled to read about that annoyingly cheerful little train and the endless catalog of what she was pulling over the hill. The term "reading" is a liberal usage of the term because we’d long since committed the story to memory. Even so, we slowly edged in a page or two of Pooh until Pooh gradually gained pre-eminence—and then we had to re-negotiate reading anything but Pooh.

When the children passed the early bedtime stage, we found they enjoyed reading as a family most when they had some occupation while we read. Al has always drawn while we read, and so the children occupied themselves with similar activities. Drawing, painting, needlework, woodcarving, and other projects have grown up around evenings spent collectively with books. One of my favorite Christmas memories is of reading Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes aloud for the first time, while the children strung cranberries and Al decorated the house.

We’ve read books in the mountains, on picnics, and through long stretches of desert on family vacations. Once when far from home, we were rescued from unspeakable tedium—not to mention greasy plastic-covered chairs—by reading Anne’s House of Dreams on a quiet sidewalk while the alternator on our car was repaired. Sometimes the children have joined in the reading, as in the year we made A Christmas Carol into a reader’s theater complete with improvised Victorian costuming.

Films and Television

We actually own a television and we’ve actually watched it. We love good films and fine programs; however, the decline in availability of either has pushed us more and more toward reading. We generally use a simple criterion: If the program gives satisfaction equal to that of reading a great book, it’s worth watching, and probably worth recording.

The choice to watch something is generally made in a context that includes good literature. Consequently, movies and other programs have more to measure up to than might otherwise be the case. And apart from comparison to other entertainments, films and television programs have to be more interesting than the projects that go with reading, or the plight of characters last left in the uncertainty of a suspenseful plot twist.

Our viewing is likely to be planned, and often takes place on an evening toward the end of a week when everyone’s too tired to do anything else. Films and programs that we truly love frequently are associated with a "season" and so we generally wind up watching them with the seasons year after year.

Nearly everything that’s available for viewing seems calibrated to the pace of today’s hectic world. Reading aloud breaks the relentlessness of that pace simply because a person can read only so fast. And so reading tends to draw a family back across the threshold of a slower pace to enjoy time more richly spent.

When to Begin

Reading to the children from the cradle on up has made a little easier the job of instilling a love of reading, but it truly is never too late. Even children who appear disinterested may be listening and absorbing more than we think. One Summer as we read I Promessi Sposi to our older children. Our seven-year-old flitted in and out of the room and showed every symptom of inattention and boredom. We continued reading, and he continued flitting. Surprisingly, as the days passed he began asking questions that indicated not only comprehension, but genuine interest.

One factor in the success of reading together is to do so with a positive approach. Reading aloud as a reaction to other media and activities casts reading in a negative light. If, for example, the focus is "turning off the TV," family members are inclined to focus on what they miss. Whether or not a family starts reading when children are in the cradle, one of the chief things is perseverence. There are always obstacles.

Ideas for bringing books and stories to life have also helped to broaden the influence of reading in our home. These activities not only approximate the sound-and-sight medium of television and motion pictures, but transcend those media in their breadth of appeal. When, for instance, our daughter felt the injustice of having a bedroom smaller than that of her older brother, we spent little time discussing the relative measure of sibling seniority, but went straight to the genuine similarities between her room and Heidi’s loft or Jo March’s garret. She’s loved her room ever since. We’ve also enjoyed "virtual vacations" where we’ve attempted to approximate (through decorating, cooking, music and background sound, etc.) locations and periodizations of books we’ve been reading.

Where viewing is a dominant leisure-time activity, viewing habits can be looked at as bases for migrating to books and short stories. We’ve found some of our favorite books through tracing films back to the novels or short stories upon which they were based--usually finding we preferred the book to its film adaptation. We’ve also found sometimes that as interest has waned for a book being read to a younger child, viewing an adaptation has re-awakened the child’s curiosity. Children seem less burdened by knowing the conclusions to stories than adults do. In fact it frequently increases interest because fear and suspense are sometimes the reason for lost interest in the first place.

The list of possibilities and probable benefits is a long one, and so you’re invited to peruse the list of books at the left, and read about stepping into the stories, adaptations, and other facets of reading as a family.