Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook Eighth Ed

When my sisters and I were younger, there weren't many things that could beat Dad reading to us. Although Dad worked full-time and didn't spend much time with us in the classroom, he always tried to work in reading before bedtime. The Little House books, Beverley Cleary's books, and other "classics" were always entertaining to hear aloud, even though most of us had already read them for ourselves (maybe it was Dad's voices). Author Jim Trelease was also a dad who read aloud to his kids because he enjoyed it, and because his father had read to him when he was a young boy. One day, almost by accident, he stumbled onto several realizations: most children are rarely or never read to; children that are read to tend to become livelong, avid readers; and children who don't read or are never read to often lag way behind in both their reading and verbal skills.

The product of his investigation and research is this title, first published in 1979. Its initial purpose was to educate parents and teachers on the impact that reading aloud to children can have, as well as to suggest some excellent books for reading aloud. Now in its 8th edition, edited and updated by education specialist Cyndi Giorgis, The Read-Aloud Handbook serves the same goal, with new content for today's parents and educators. The introduction and the first chapter make the case (very loudly!) on why parents should read to their children. The following chapters address the when's, what's, and how's of reading aloud, offering advice on the stages of reading aloud, as well as some do's and don'ts. The fourth chapter discusses Sustained Silent Reading (not lacking in most homeschools, I'm sure!), and why it naturally complements reading aloud. Subsequent chapters discuss the role of libraries, what we can learn from the successes of the Harry Potter phenomenon and Oprah's book club, the print climate in the home, school and library, the impact of electronic media on reading, visual literacy and picture books, and much more. The last portion of the book, about 120 pages in length, is the "Treasury of Read-Alouds". The Treasury is helpfully divided by type of book. For "Wordless Books" and "Predictable Books" (those with sentence patterns repeated often enough to be predictable to readers), recommendations are given in a list form. For recommendations on reference books, picture books, short novels, full-length novels, poetry, anthologies, and fairy/folk tales, the featured books are listed alphabetically, and include name of author, publisher, copyright date, # of pages, what grades the book is recommended for, and a short synopsis of the storyline. Yes, there is definitely a lot here for your mind to chew on! The list of recommended books offers a great place for parents and children to start, while his informational chapters are engrossing, and adults will find them very readable as well. While I would suspect that the percentage of homeschool parents who read to their children is probably already higher than those who do not homeschool, this volume offers any parent interested in beginning to read aloud to their children an excellent place to start. - Jess