Raise A Reader

Raising a reader is a Canada wide call to encourage literacy. It's a challenge for all parents to read to their children, to purchase books if they can, and if they can't, there are school and municipal libraries to fill the gap. I was born lucky. My family loved books and our house had shelves of books devoted to knowledge. And because this is my blog, I can quote bits and pieces from old favourites: the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, Now We Are Six by A.A.Milne, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll and A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.
Where to begin? I shall start with a few lines from The Old Sailor (A.A.Milne) "There was once an old sailor my grandfather knew, Who had so many things which he wanted to do, That, whenever he thought it was time to begin, He couldn't because of the state he was in." (Look it up!) Milne's poems are filled with humour and are a wonderful commentary on the human condition. So often I have so much to do, I truly don't know where to begin!

There's a thread of sadness through, King John's Christmas, (Milne again) but it all comes right at the end. Here are the first four lines. "King John was not a good man, He had his little ways, And sometimes no one spoke to him, For days and days and days." My brother memorized the whole poem and insisted on reciting it to his family every Christmas.

One of my favourite, Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling) is The Elephant's Child. Jack Nickelson (yes,That Award Winning Jack Nickelson) taped the story. Voice only. I don't know where the tape can be found now, but Jack might know. It is beautifully read. The story begins: "In the High and Far-Off times, the Elephant, O Best Beloved had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn't pick up things with it." And Kipling spins a wonderful tale of how the Elephant got its trunk. The words spill like honey off my tongue as I read the story aloud.

Another little piece, this from A Child's Christmas in Wales (Dylan Thomas) This story cries out to be read aloud. A line or two from the second verse so Dylan Thomas in his magical spinning of words. "All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street;and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow..."

I have quoted from Alice's discussion with Humpty Dumpty in a previous blog. Check it out if you are interested. Raise A Reader by reading and sharing the stories with children, your own, your nieces, nephews, young cousins, kids dragged in from the street, your cat and dog and please yourself by listening to the magic wrought by writers. There are thousands of wonderful books for children in libraries. Raise your readers to love reading and you will have prepared them to be a life long book lovers.

Drop by my web site to see what I do. I write. Romance
Anita
www.anitabirt.com