Tag Archives: reading

Savoring Life, Wondering Child

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This savoring of life is no small thing.

The element of wonder
is almost lost today
with the onslaught of the media
and gadgets
of our noisy world.

To let a child lose it
is to make him blind and deaf
to the best of life.

~ Gladys Hunt in Honey for a Child’s Heart  

I’m giving a talk on children’s literature tomorrow.  I’m thankful for the impetus to read through this excellent book again.  I buy Honey for a Child’s Heart in bulk, because it is my first choice for a baby present.  Often I mark the brand new book, noting our family’s favorites. 

Each ramble through this book resurrects moments of warmth, joy and laughter.  The deliciousness of receiving a new Little House book each birthday of my girlhood; the echoes of “keep reading” from my sons; the books that broke our heart and incapacitated us; the hide-and-seek games my oldest son and I played with the Ralph Moody books we were reading concurrently; how right it feels to have a toddler on your lap while you are both absorbed in a book.

It will be a challenge to keep this talk to one hour…
 

Sponge, Sand-Glass, Strain-Bag and Diamond

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Girl Reading   ~ Renoir

Readers may be divided into four classes:

1. Sponges, who absorb all that they read
and return it in nearly the same state,
only a little dirtied.

2.  Sand-glasses, who retain nothing
and are content to get through a book
for the sake of getting through time.

3.  Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs
of what they read.

4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable,
who profit by what they read,
and enable others to profit by it also.

~  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Thank you to all you diamonds who have enriched me.

Handcuffed to Characters

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I used to think that if I were unencumbered by family ties (don’t mistake me: I love the cumbers), I would go to the pediatric ward of a large hospital and hold babies that needed to be held.  I pictured myself in a rocking chair, hair in a bun, humming and rocking, humming and rocking. I would sing hymns, I’d make up songs about their names, I’d tell these little ones about the God who made them, and gaze into the deep pools of their eyes. Of course, the babies would never scream; gurgling and cooing would be the only sounds they would make.  In my dreams.

Another dream is shoving its way to the head of the line. 

That dream is having reluctant readers over to my house and reading great books aloud together.

After some modern, easy-to-read books, I assigned The Diary of Anne Frank to my reluctant reader-niece.  She plowed (I so want to spell it ploughed like the English) through it because I dangled the carrot of watching The Freedom Writers in front of her.  I chose Willa Cather’s My Antonia for the next assignment.  Here was a book which combined her heritage from both sides of her family: one set of grandparents who grew up on the farm in the Midwest and the other set of grandparents who grew up in Eastern Europe and immigrated to America sixty years ago.  She even has an Aunt Yulka, the name of the younger sister in the book. Nonetheless, she could not get into it and read it with eyes which forgot the top of the page before the bottom of the page is finished. 

This morning we fixed large mugs of tea; sat down and read chapters aloud to each other, alternating paragraphs.  We stopped to discuss (or pronounce) new words, clues, foreshadowing, and cultural checkpoints.  Antonia wore cotton dresses in the winter.  “What kind of dresses would normal people in Nebraska wear in the winter?”  The Shimerda family lived in a dugout house.  “Why were wooden framed houses rare?” 

As we progressed I heard her read with more expression.  Comprehension began to drip off the ends of her words like honey that refuses to be confined to the piece of toast.  We got caught up in the story and began to anticipate events.  

Reading aloud together is not efficient; reading aloud together could never be termed convenient.  But it fits in with my stubborn insistence on slowing down at this time of year when we get sucked into hyperactivity.  We were warm, comfortable, engaged…together.  Reading together is a simple way to share the experience of being changed that comes from the powerful writing of a potent story. 

When I look back on our homeschool journey, my favorite memories are the times we shared after lunch with a book in my hand and a glass of water handy.  Those extra chapters read because none of us could bear to stop.  
The magic that took place when signs and symbols on a page were spoken into the air.  The exhilaration of being swept away, captured by a story, handcuffed to characters about whom we came to care deeply.  

Sandy’s daughter, Cassie’s essay articulates the joys of a reading life.  Reading: A Common Bond


First Chapter Rule

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A Child Who Sleeps on His Book  Jean-Baptize Greuze

There is a difference between assigned reading and an assigned book.  One of the rules of our house for assigned reading was

“If, by the end of the first chapter,
 you don’t want to continue,
stop reading it. 
Pick another book.” 

I had enough confidence that a good book would draw in the reader by the end of the first chapter.  I weaseled a lot of books into my sons’ hands with this promise.  They often looked at a book I was pedaling with mistrust, refusing to acknowledge that their mom had any idea what boys would want to read.  And I tried not to rub their snotty noses in it when they kept reading beyond the first chapter. 

A Search, A Challenge, An Adventure

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The exercise of reading and thinking
is an extremely mental-visual psychological process,
difficult to learn,
impossible to a degree of efficiency
without continued conscientious effort,
but capable of improvement
throughout one’s lifetime.

Reading is thinking,
it is a search,
it is a challenge;
and when done successfully,
it is an adventure which involves two persons–
the reader and the author.

The reader must carry on a silent conversation with the author,
asking what is being said,
questioning reasons,
and approving or disapproving
of the manner in which the material is presented.

Reading is never passive acceptance.

It is an energy-absorbing activity,
requiring movement of the mind,
and sometimes heart,
out to meet the mind of the author
and to grasp the meaning of another’s thoughts.

“It is,” says A.B. Herr, “a two-way process;
the reader must give in order to receive.“

~  William H. Armstrong in
Study Is Hard Work

I can’t say enough wonderful things about this little book.  My niece and I are working our way through the book together.  It takes me a while to read it, because I stop so often to copy quotes into my commonplace book.

It was dear Janie, who turned me on to Study Is Hard Work.  I think of Janie in her classroom now and would sooooo love to observe the learning process with such a master teacher at the helm.  Thanks, friend.  Even though your blogging voice is quiet,  the gifts you’ve given in the past keep paying dividends.