Reading to Older Kids

Vocal heroes: how children of all ages benefit from being read to 

Reading aloud to older children allows them to experience what fluent reading sounds like, and they carry that fluidity into their own reading

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 26 January, 2016, 12:16am

UPDATED : Tuesday, 26 January, 2016, 12:16am

Annie Ho
life@scmp.com

I recently read an article about a woman whose marriage improved after her husband read aloud to her while she was sick in bed. Everyone loves being read to, no matter one’s age.

Hong Kong has an emerging read-aloud culture. In the beginning, parents and teachers only read to children who were learning to read, to help them sound out words and decipher new vocabulary. There wasn’t much reading aloud to children in the early and toddler years, and even less reading aloud to children who had already learnt to read on their own.

In the past decade, through the efforts of both government and non-governmental organisations in Hong Kong, parents and teachers have embraced the ideal of reading aloud from birth. This ideal is so important that the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a policy stating the three essential things that every baby needs: to be vaccinated, to be breastfed, and to be read aloud to.

In order to further develop a strong culture of reading aloud, parents in Hong Kong need to continue reading aloud to children who can easily read by themselves. Modelling best practices is the greatest benefit of reading aloud to “big kids”. When you read, you allow your child to experience what fluent reading sounds like, with different voices, changes in speed and emphasis on certain words. In time, he will carry that kind of fluidity with him to his own reading, whether silently or aloud. When you pause to consider certain plot developments, dialogue or descriptions, you are highlighting the parts of the story that require examination or contemplation. You are modelling reading comprehension.

A Little, Aloud by Angela Macmillan.

If pausing to discuss the book seems contrived and too much like teaching, don’t do it. In fact, research studies show a strong correlation between the quality of voice fluency and silent reading comprehension. So long as you help your child develop a fluent read-aloud voice, you will necessarily improve his reading comprehension.

Reading aloud to your child will also help to demonstrate humanity. When you show empathy for a character or share your awareness of a situation in the story, you are giving your child an opportunity to understand the world around him.

A Necklace of Raindrops by Joan Aiken.

Any story that you think your child may enjoy will make good read-aloud material. If you worry that Harry Potter will challenge the stamina of both reader and listener, then you can consider stories in smaller doses. A Little, Aloud, by Angela Macmillan, is an anthology comprising both prose and poetry, with royalties from sales donated to The Reader Organisation, a UK charity that promotes the connection between reading and well-being.

Joan Aiken was a wonderful author of children’s literature, and A Necklace of Raindrops is a collection of eight of her short stories.

Teachers can also play a part in this, especially language teachers. Dr Stephen Krashen, the leading authority on second-language acquisition, has extensively researched this area, and all his findings point to the conclusion that we acquire language by input, not output. What this means is that speaking more will not make us more fluent. Therefore, rather than asking students to take turns reading aloud from a shared text, teachers will go far in helping students develop language skills simply by giving students ample opportunity to listen to the language in a sustained and engaging manner. Simply put, the most effective language teachers are those who read compelling stories out loud to their students.

The start of the new year is as good a time as any to re-establish the habit of reading aloud at home and in classrooms. Not limited to babies and toddlers, this can also be a cherished and enriching ritual for loved ones aged between seven and 107.

Dr Krashen will be giving talks on language acquisition and free voluntary reading on February 19 and 20 at The University of Hong Kong. For more information, visit www.bringmeabook.org.hk.

Annie Ho is board chair of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong (www.bringmeabook.org.hk), a non-profit organisation advocating for family literacy

Alice In Wonderland

If ever there was a classic children’s book, Alice in Wonderland is it 

Lewis Carroll’s fantastical story launched the children’s literary genre, so it’s fitting it has been celebrated in so many ways during 2015, the 150th anniversary of its first publication 

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 27 December, 2015, 1:00pm

UPDATED : Sunday, 27 December, 2015, 5:09pm

Annie Ho
life@scmp.com

The cover of Grahame Baker-Smith ‘s book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Panorama Pops by Lewis Carroll

This year is the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. You need not have read the book to recognise the iconic images of a spunky girl in a blue dress, a peculiar rabbit with a pocket watch, the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts. The story includes a number of unforgettable quotes that are nonsensical and sometimes profoundly philosophical: “I give myself good advice, but I seldom follow it”, “I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then”, and the infamous “Off with their heads!”

The origin story is as well known as the fantastical tale itself. The author spent a summer with the Liddell family and told stories to the three daughters on a river outing. Alice, one of the daughters, enjoyed the story so much that she asked Carroll to write it down for her. He worked on the manuscript over the course of the next couple of years. When it was published in 1865 with illustrations by Sir John Tenniel, Alice became an instant sensation. The equally successful sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, was published in 1872.

To commemorate this anniversary, Macmillan, publisher of the first 1865 edition, released a new edition, The Complete Alice, on July 4, also known as Alice Day. In the introduction to this anniversary edition, contemporary children’s writer Philip Pullman proffers an excellent view on why Alice became a literary and cultural phenomenon:

“It’s sometimes said that Lewis Carroll’s Alice books were the origin of all later children’s literature, and I’m inclined to agree. There were books for children before 1865, but they were almost all written to make a moral point. Good children behave like this; bad children behave like that, and are punished for it, and serve them right. In Alice, for the first time, we find a realistic child taking part in a story whose intention was entirely fun. Both children and adults loved them at once, and have never stopped doing so. They are as fresh and clever and funny today as they were 150 years ago.”

Carroll’s original handwritten manuscript titled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, with illustrations by Carroll himself, was given to Alice Liddell, and eventually sold to the British Library in 1948. The original woodblocks of Tenniel’s illustrations are also with the British Library.

Alice came out of copyright in 1907, and many publishers printed their own editions. Since then, more than 70 illustrators have illustrated Alice, including Arthur Rackham, Tove Jansson, Ralph Steadman, Anthony Browne, Helen Oxenbury, Peter Blake, Robert Ingpen, Eric Puybaret, Lisbeth Zwerger and artists Salvador Dali and Yayoi Kusama.

Alice Illustrated, edited by Jeff Menges, is a compilation of imaginatively interpreted artwork by early- to mid-20th century illustrators.

There are also a number of 150th anniversary editions published in the past year, including a limited edition published by Engage Books, with all 42 of the original Tenniel illustrations, and another edition in which Glenn Diddit creates an unabridged graphic novel with black and white illustrations that pay homage to the original Tenniel illustrations.

Grahame Baker-Smith has created a panorama pop-up book, together with his designs for an Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland collection of 10 stamps for the British Royal Mail.

It’s difficult to come up with a generally accepted definition of what constitutes “timeless” or “classic” literature. However, when a book has never been out of print and has been translated into more than 176 languages, as Alice has, it indisputably qualifies as such.

Annie Ho is board chairwoman of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong (bringmeabook.org.hk), a non-profit organisation advocating for family literacy