Excerpted from Chapter Two of The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease (Penguin, 2006, 6th edition). For a list of all topics covered here and in the print edition see Chapter Two question list.

Chapter 2: When to begin (and end) read-aloud

How old must a child be before you start reading to him?

That is the question I am most often asked by parents. The next is: “When is the child too old to be read to?”

In answer to the first question, I ask one of my own. “When did you start talking to the child? Did you wait until he was six months old?”

“We started talking to him the day he was born,” parents respond.

“And what language did your child speak the day he was born? English? Japanese? Italian?” They’re about to say English when it dawns on them the child didn’t speak any language yet.

". . . during these early stages the parent is learning how to calm the child . . . so he or she can begin to look around and listen when you pass on information."

“Wonderful!” I say. “There you were holding that newborn infant in your arms, whispering, ‘We love you, Tess. Daddy and I think you are the most beautiful baby in the world.’ You were speaking multisyllable words and complex sentences in a foreign language to a child who didn’t understand one word you were saying! And you never thought twice about doing it.

But most people can’t imagine reading to that same child. And that’s sad. If a child is old enough to talk to, she’s old enough to read to. It’s the same language.”

Obviously, from birth to six months of age we are concerned less with “understanding” than with “conditioning” the child to your voice and the sight of books. Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, when he was chief of the child development unit of Boston Children’s Hospital Medical Center, observed that new parents’ most critical task during these early stages is learning how to calm the child, how to bring it under control, so he or she can begin to look around and listen when you pass on information.¹ Much the same task confronts the classroom teacher as she faces a new class each September.

What about reading aloud to children with 'special needs'?

In Cushla and Her Books, author Dorothy Butler described how Cushla Yeoman’s parents began reading aloud to her when she was four months of age.² By nine months the child was able to respond to the sight of certain books and convey to her parents that these were her favorites. By age five she had taught herself to read.

What makes Cushla’s story so dramatic is that she was born with chromosome damage that caused deformities of the spleen, kidney, and mouth cavity. It also produced muscle spasms—which prevented her from sleeping for more than two hours a night or holding anything in her hand until she was three years old—and hazy vision beyond her fingertips.

Until she was three, the doctors diagnosed Cushla as “mentally and physically retarded” and recommended that she be institutionalized. Her parents, after seeing her early responses to books, refused; instead, they put her on a dose of fourteen read-aloud books a day. By age five, Cushla was found by psychologists to be well above average in intelligence and a socially well-adjusted child.

The story of Cushla and her family has appeared in each edition of The Read-Aloud Handbook and each time it was my hope it would inspire an unknown reader someplace. One day I received a letter from Marcia Thomas, then of Memphis, Tennessee:

Jennifer Thomas graduated from her Concord (Massachusetts) high school, passing her MCAS test, and was a member of  the National Honor Society. I was honored to have been an invited guest at her graduation party (see photo right). A talented artist, Jennifer competed in the juried VSA competition in 2003 for artists between the ages of 16-25 who live in the U.S. and have a disability. Her piece was one of the 15 chosen to tour the U.S. In September 2005, Jennifer began undergraduate classes at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If the Yeomans and the Thomases can accomplish all they did with their children, imagine how much can be realized by the average family if they begin reading to a child early and in earnest.

One of the most common yet painful learning challenges for children and their families today is dyslexia, a subject too complex to address here. What I can say is that children who suffer from this disability have an even greater need to hear someone reading aloud: 1.) Because tasting the printed word auditorily may help to whet the appetite enough to inspire greater determination on their own part; and 2.) Since their reading abilities may never blossom enough to produce significant amounts of reading, hearing words will be their main source of vocabulary and print offers a richer vocabulary than conversation. Worth noting, on May 13, 2002 Fortune magazine offered an excellent cover story ("Overcoming Dyslexia" by Betsy Morris) on famous American business men and women who have succeeded in spite of their dyslexia, thanks to both their own perseverance and their families patience. The article can be found online at:
            http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2002/05/13/322876/index.htm

NEXT: How is my child’s reading going to get better if I’m doing the reading?

Chapter Two — p. 1   p. 2   p. 3   Footnotes