Reading Aloud Together: How I Became a Very Hungry Reader!
By: Caron Levis, author of This Way, Charlie and other picture books
Mom & me accepting a Christopher Award for Ida, Always.
“Let me! Let me do with that!”
My toddler self excitedly interrupts mom as she reads the Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. In the time of cassette tapes, my mom recorded one of our nightly storytimes so that while I was with an evening babysitter, I could flip the pages of one of my always-at-home books, and be comforted by her reading to me in her (then stronger) Brooklyn accent.
Listening now, I can hear how I became a confident and avid reader.
Caron: “He have one cherry pie, he have pickles, he has lollipops he have— what’s that?”
Mom: “Sausage.”
Caron: “Shossage? What’s that?”
Mom: “Like a hot dog.”
Caron: “He have hot dog and warmer-melon...”
My mom let me interrupt, read along with her, and paused to let me finish lines. She encouraged my efforts by saying, “Right!” whether I was or not and modeled by gently repeating the line. When I asked a question, she paused to answer. As I looked, listened, and mimicked, I was making sense and meaning out of the lines and curves on the pages; I was absorbing the ways my mom shaped sounds with her mouth and conveyed emotion with her expressions. As children are read to, they are reading, too.
The repetition of storytimes, put mom’s voice in my head, so that even if she went out, I got an early experience of what I wrote in Ida, Always: “You don’t have to see it, to feel it.” Now I enjoy listening to her give reading wings to her grandchildren, because even if she can’t Stop That Yawn! while reading my own books, some words are just best read by a Brooklyn mom who is a “…a bee-yoo-tee-ful buttah fly.”
My mom reading an early draft of Stop That Yawn! to her grandchild, long before it published.
Mom at my storytime for Stop That Yawn! She knit me the scarf from the book.
Me practicing reading aloud This Way, Charlie to a pair of rescue goats I met in NYC.
Caron Levis is the author of several picture books including the award-winning Ida, Always and This Way, Charlie illustrated by Charles Santoso; Mama’s Work Shoes illustrated by Vanessa Brantley Newton; Stop That Yawn! illustrated by LeUyen Pham. She is a professor and advisor for The New School’s Writing for Children/YA MFA program, a licensed social worker, and loves using drama and writing to explore books, feelings, and imagination with kids through her author workshops.
Listen to Caron Levis read aloud This Way Charlie and then visit her at www.caronlevis.com.