Family Reading Time

Oh, how I wish this activity would have a resurgence in popularity.

"Reading aloud was fun, and there was a "togetherness" about it that transcended subject and underscored the irrelevance of grades and word counts.  From my father we might get A. A. Milne, but the nice thing was that he wasn't reading down to us; he liked Milne, too.  He also read us Robert Frost.  Our home reading circle might, after all, have a 30-year age span, and stuff that wasn't good enough for everybody wasn't good enough for anybody.

Reading aloud had a music and a magic that quite by-passed mere communication.  It wasn't just something you did for the benefit of those who couldn't have done it for themselves.  It was a way to commune rather than communicate.  We early learned the difference..."

--Daniel Melcher from the Foreword of Newbery and Caldecott Medal and Honor Books, an Annotated Bibliography by Linda Kauffman Peterson and Marilyn Leathers Solt.  Boston: G K Hall, 1982.