Twice today I had the chance to bemoan how little I have been reading lately.

Over lunch with a dear friend, I talked and talked about where all the time seems to go, how tired we are at the end of our over-scheduled days and how hard it is to read long enough to get engrossed in a book.

Then I talked with my wonderful neighbor and somehow we got on the same exact topic. My neighbor has a super active two year old who keeps my her so busy that it has taken her more than a week to read Catching Fire.

And then as I read Facebook, I clicked through the lovely Carol Hampton Rasco’s post about the Winners of the 2012 Indies Choice and the E.B. White Read-Aloud Awards. I was shocked by just how few of the books I had read.

Baseball season has begun and so I say to myself, “Three strikes and you stand reminded.”

Reminded to take my own medicine or to practice what I preach depending on which figure of speech you prefer.

Reminded to read, read, read…

I have a client who is reading lots of Read Together books with me. She loves reading what she perceives to be “real books” and her smile glows when we are reading. While I adore seeing new readers so happy, I also am thrilled when I see true reading growth coming out of this simple Read Together practice.

The other day, I was working on sight words with this client. Sight words are those words we need to know by sight- many of which are impossible to sound out. She was struggling with many of the words and I saw her frustration growing.

Right as I was getting ready to abandon the activity, I showed her the word help. She paused and then said, “It’s help. Help! Like in I Can Help!”

And there we had one pleased child and one tutor doing her happy dance. Here’s to Reading Together!

 
Oh No, George! is a nearly perfect book.

It is a Read Together book. There are many repeating lines throughout the book that, after modeling, the emergent reader will be able to read independently.

It is perfect for working with older children on inference and prediction. 

And it is funny.

At a workshop the other night, I had a father who laughed out loud as I showed Oh No, George! And he laughed right at the part of the presentation when I talked about passing on a love of books we love. Our children do what we do, not what we say. If we read books that make us laugh, they will learn that reading is fun.

Just today, I read Oh No, George! with a client. I don’t know what made the child happier- the fact that she could read entire pages on her own or the fact that George is a funny dog.

Oh No, George! is a book that will bring on the laughter and the learning. A pretty good combination, I would say…

Over a year ago now I wrote this post.

It tells the tale of a day that I drove from Caroline and Katherine’s elementary school to a school just 10 miles from here. I left our well stocked and staffed school library to go to a school in a neighboring district that had no library, art or music program. I learned on that day  that we have two educational systems in our country. One for the haves and one for the have nots.

I just finished leading a weekend long exploration of this topic. We watched films, participated in discussions and listened to experts. The work leading up to this weekend was overwhelming and exhausting. The girls were tired of my meetings, my e-mails  and my phone calls and frankly so was I. Going in to the weekend, I promised that I was done with this kind of volunteering after the weekend.

Then one of the speakers thanked us for being “champions of equality.” And that phrase has stayed with me. While I will be doing less volunteering so that I can spend more time with Rob and the girls and more time developing the work I love, I can’t stop completely.

What kind of a “champion of equity” would I be if I did?

Nothing like a little sibling rivalry to fuel the reading fires.

Tonight, Rob brought home the New York Yankees season preview from the Wall Street Journal.

Last year, Rob and Caroline were all about the Yankees while Katherine really wasn’t so involved. Lately, though, she has expressed a greater interest and has gotten quite sad when left out of Yankee related conversations. So tonight, when Caroline poured over the article, too engrossed to read out loud, Katherine got mad.

Fortunately, instead of storming to her room and slamming her door (which, sadly, she’s been known to do), she became motivated. She took the article, reading as many of the words as she could. Player’s names, positions, numbers, smiling bigger with each word read.

Perhaps, by the end of baseball season we will have a new reader in our house…

I am having one of those weeks. One in which I have bitten off way more than I can chew.

Usually blog posts come to me pretty easily but as I sat down to write this one, my mind filled with all I have to do and think about and resolve. When this happens, I scroll through the pictures on my phone for inspiration.

And sitting right there was this sunset.

While it is pretty, the real lesson comes in the story behind it. Last week, I was in the kitchen while the girls played outside in our unseasonably warm weather. Katherine came running in screaming, “The sunset, the sunset!!” She insisted I get my camera and come out at once. As I paused to photograph the sun that looked more like it belonged at the beach than in our suburb, I was able to take a deep breath. I took a deep breath and realized that these are the things that five year olds take the time to notice.

If I had come upon this sunset during this super busy week, would I have stopped to appreciate it?  Probably not. I write this as a reminder to have the eye of a five year old. At least every so often…

While middle grade fiction seems to be calling to me these days, I am taking a break to read a ‘grown up’ book. One of my favorite parts of the year is when I get to bid on the best auction item ever and I won it this year. Each month, I will be receiving a book from a reader friend whose recommendations have always been wonderful.

Last night I began reading The Shadow of the Wind and while I have barely read enough to give even a summary, I just have to share this quote…

This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived it and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, it’s spirit grows and strengthens.

How beautiful and how true…

I started writing about Read Together Books last summer. I just adore these books that are easy enough for emergent readers to read with only a little bit of encouragement from an adult or even an older child. I especially love finding these books on the shelf of a book store not in an elementary school. There are tons of books written with the emergent reader in mind but most are created by publishers who sell to the school market only.

Fortunately, with a bit of attention, books that aren’t intended to teach children to read, can also be used for this purpose. Because the books that I put in this category don’t look like school books, they are also an easier sell to an older reluctant reader.

I have a client right now who is struggling to decode even the simplest of words. Enter the Read Together Book. With these books, my client can read independently and happily to herself, to younger children in her school and to her younger brother. The little kids are happy to hear her read and she is able to feel like the big kid she is.

Her current favorite is Tuck Me In by Dean Hacohen and Sherry Scharschmidt. In this story. multiple animals are put to bed with the same repeating refrain. After I read the first two pages, my client was able to read the rest of the book by using the strong picture clues and by following the pattern I established.

She brought Tuck Me In home to read to her younger brother over the weekend. I bet it was a win-win for the whole family.

Yesterday, as I walked Daisy, I listened to an old Brain Burps about Books podcast by Katie Davis. Katie was interviewing the amazing Carol Rasco of Reading is Fundamental. I stopped mid-stride when I heard Carol say something so important.

I paraphrase but the gist of what she said was that…

… we have keep children connected to literature until they have that aha moment.

For all the reading, talking and thinking I have done about the power and importance of reading, I had never quite thought about it that way but Carol is right. Reading is so powerful that once a child has that moment, the parent and teacher can, in many cases, almost step back. The child can take it from there.

But the key is to hold on to the children until they get there. For some kids, that aha comes while sitting on a parent’s lap at the age of four. For some they will be sitting in a circle on the rug of their first grade class. For others, they will be struggling through short vowel words with the reading specialist at their school in the third grade before that moment comes.

And for many, many others we will let go of them before that moment comes. In many cases, we are letting go of an entire school, an entire community. And our children deserve more than that. Let us hold on to each one of them for just a little bit longer. Just long enough for that aha moment…

Mom: “Do you know how the story ends?”

Mom: “How do you know that? We’re nowhere near the end.”

And maybe this is yet another reason why I love books. Because through books, our little ones can stay innocent just a little while longer.

While her ultimate story may some day have a happy ending, her story now is anything but happy.