Not that personal experience doesn’t count. In many years of reading aloud to my children, I knew that something big was happening. I could feel it. The mutual engagement, the speed and breadth of their language acquisition, the shared vicarious thrills and laughs over the stories we read; the experience was both practical and mystical. Yet without ye Giants—the researchers, doctors, professors, librarians, writers, and philanthropists who have devoted their energies to exploring the hidden secrets of reading out loud—I could not have told you why it was happening.
I have debts of gratitude to a great number of people. I am so thankful for my grandparents, Mary and Frank Gillman and Barbara and Allan Cox, who made my parents possible, and who read to them (and to me). I am grateful for the loyal and unstinting love of my mother, Noel Cox, and of my father and stepmother, Allan Cox and Grace Simonson.
Lisa Wolfinger, thank you for showing me how to put reading aloud at the heart of family life. Thank you, Robert Messenger, for giving “The Great Gift of Reading Aloud” such a sensitive and demanding edit and such great acreage in the Wall Street Journal in the summer of 2015. Thank you, Mary Ortiz, for steering me in the right direction afterward, and giving me a push.
Thank you, Stephen Barbara, my amazing agent, for your wise counsel and buoyant good humor as draft succeeded draft. I’m grateful, too, to the rest of the team at Inkwell Management, in particular Lyndsey Blessing and Claire Draper.
Thank you, Gail Winston, my wonderful editor at Harper, who has the merciful acupuncturist’s gift of knowing exactly where to stick the needle.
Thank you, Sofia Groopman and the dazzling Emily Taylor, especially, for herding the editorial cats, and to Robin Bilardello and Fritz Metsch for the beautiful cover art and interior design. Thank you, Miranda Ottewell, for saving me from typos and snafus.
For editorial tough love and the generous gift of their time, I am deeply indebted to Rosemary Wells, Diane Zeleny, and Mona Charen, as well as to Danielle “Minister of Fun” Crittenden and David Frum for many years of affectionate friendship, excellent advice, and fabulous parties.
For insights, inspiration, anecdotes, and expertise that made this book possible, I am so grateful to (in alphabetical order, because otherwise it’s impossible) Dr. Mohammed Kabir Abubakar, Anne Applebaum, Lizzie Atkinson, Dr. Barbara Bean, Claudia Zoe Bedrick, Patrick Braillard, Stuie Brown, Morten Christiansen, Lora Coonce, Dan Coupland, Melissa Davidson, Carl Dennis, Maureen Ferguson, Jane Fidler, Luke Fischer, Amy Freeman, Kate Fulton, Sally Gannon, Reuel Gerecht, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Kelli Gray, Chen Guangcheng, Amy Guglielmo, Paul Higgins, Dr. Scott Holland, Annie Holmquist, Lauri Hornik, Dr. Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus, Dr. John Hutton, Dr. Candace Kendle, Dr. Perri Klass, Deborah Lancman, Jamie Lingwood, Alyson Lundell, Matt Mehan, Taylor Monaco, Christine Nelson, Walter Olson, Marshall Peters, Susan Pinker, Steve Pippin, Andrew Pudewa, Christine Rosen, Caroline Rowland, Matthew Rubery, Laura Amy Schlitz, Roger Scruton, Dr. Suna Seo, Christina Hoff Sommers, Dr. Siva Subramanian, Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, Maria Tatar, Puffin Travers, Jack Wang, Victoria Wells, Natasha Whitling, Marianne Worley, and Paul O. Zelinsky.
I’m particularly grateful to members of the Barsantini, Baylinson, Carroccio, Daniels, DeMuth, Duggan, Grey, Mullner, Nader, Reese, Rossiter, Sikorski, and Yeager families, who know who they are, as well as Chris Carduff at the Wall Street Journal, and to the staff of the Story Museum, in Oxford, England. I want also to thank Gwendolyn van Paasschen for making the elegant home she shared with John Makin my hermitage during an initial crunch-stage of writing, and Drs. Toby and Liz Cox for their Utah hospitality and for sharing their knowledge of pediatrics. Thank you, too, Erich Eichman, my longtime editor at the Wall Street Journal and one of the world’s true gentlemen, for your goodness and forbearance in our many years of collaboration. In a collaboration of more recent vintage, I am so thankful for the spirited and enterprising Miranda Frum at KoolHaus Media. Any “enchantment” you see online is undoubtedly her doing.
In a broader spirit of gratitude, I’d like to salute certain individuals who have made reading aloud their cause. These champions include Claudia Aristy, whose energetic stewardship of the Reach Out and Read program at Bellevue Hospital in New York brings this achievable miracle into the lives of countless low-income kids. Hurrah too for Katrina Morse and her colleagues at the Family Reading Partnership in Ithaca, New York, who have dotted the landscape of Tomkins County with cheerful exhortatory posters and little red bookshelves stocked with freebies so that families can help themselves. Hats off to Lester Laminack and Mem Fox, two especially eloquent and enthusiastic advocates of reading aloud; to Dolly Parton, whose philanthropy through her charity, Imagination Library, has put an incredible 100 million plus books into the hands of children; to the founders of Reach Out and Read, Dr. Robert Needlman, Dr. Barry Zuckerman, and Dr. Alan Mendelsohn; and to Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook, who since 1982 has perhaps done more than any other person to spread the gospel of reading aloud in the United States.
My life as a writer and mother is inconceivable without the love and support of my husband, Hugo Gurdon, my companion in a thousand swashbuckling adventures. And the Chogen? Well, obviously, none of this would have been possible without you. Molly, Paris, Violet, Phoebe, and Flora, reading to you has been the greatest privilege of my life. Being your mother is the greatest joy.
Notes
Introduction
“We let down our guard”: Kate DiCamillo, email exchange with the author, early 2015, quoted in Meghan Cox Gurdon, “The Great Gift of Reading Aloud,” Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2015.
“the big disconnect”: Catherine Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age (New York: Harper, 2013).
“the cotton wool of daily life”: Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, quoted on Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/900708-moments-of-being-autobiographical-writings.
If I were Glinda: In L. Frank Baum’s 1900 classic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Glinda achieves her benevolent effects without a wand. Since most readers will know Glinda best from the 1939 MGM movie, in which she has a wand, I’m taking the liberty of giving her one here, too.
Chapter 1: What Reading to Children Does to Their Brains
In 1947: https://www.dior.com/couture/en_us/the-house-of-dior/the-story-of-dior/the-new-look-revolution; https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jackie-robinson-breaks-color-barrier; https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Goodnight_Moon
a gazillion copies: As of April 12, 2018, the book has sold an estimated 48 million copies, according to Wikipedia.
“Goodnight Moon time”: Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 126.
a certain chilled enclosure: MRI rooms located down the hall from the Reading and Literacy Discovery Center, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, visited by author February 7–8, 2017.
This bed is narrow: These descriptions derive from the author’s own experience of undergoing a reading experiment using fMRI to help test a protocol at Cincinnati Children’s. Author has the brain scan to prove it!
Half a dozen miles away: Blue Manatee Bookstore, Cincinnati, visited by author on February 7, 2017.
A human brain was floating: Dr. John S. Hutton, interviews by author, February 7–8, 2017, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
an exciting study: John S. Hutton et al., “Home Reading Environment and Brain Activation in Preschool Children Listening to Stories,” Pediatrics 136, no. 3 (2015): 466–78.
“They come in the morning”: Andrea Roure, preschool teacher, National Child Research Center, Washington, DC, interview by author, July 20, 2017.
two additional first-of-their-kind fMRI-based papers: John S. Hutton et al., “Story Time Turbocharger? Child Engagement During Shared Reading and Cerebellar Activation and Connectivity in Preschool-Age Children Listening to Stories,” PLoS One 12, no. 5 (2017): e0177398; Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus and Joh
n S. Hutton, “Brain Connectivity in Children Is Increased by the Time They Spend Reading Books and Decreased by the Length of Exposure to Screen-Based Media,” Acta Paediatrica 107, no. 4 (April 2018), https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.14176.
greater activation in their cerebellum: Hutton et al., “Story Time Turbocharger.”
a time of such intense formation: For a useful description of brain growth in infancy and early childhood, see “Early Childhood Development: The Key to a Full and Productive Life,” Unicef, https://www.unicef.org/dprk/ecd.pdf.
“Reading regularly with young children”: Council on Early Childhood, “Literacy Promotion: An Essential Component of Primary Care Pediatric Practice,” Pediatrics, June 23, 2014, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2014–1384.
almost half of young children: A. R. Lauricella et al., The Common Sense Census: Plugged-in Parents of Tweens and Teens (San Francisco: Common Sense Media, 2016), 13.
Children ages eight and under: Jacqueline Howard, CNN, “Kids Under 9 Spend More Than 2 Hours a Day on Screens, Report Shows,” October 19, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/19/health/children-smartphone-tablet-use-report/index.html.
Older children are even more absorbed: Vicky Rideout, Sita Pai, “U.S. Teens Use an Average of Nine Hours of Media Per Day, Tweens Use Six Hours,” Common Sense Media, November 3, 2015, 13. There is a distinction between young people’s use of screen-based media and consumption of all entertainment media (which would include activities such as reading and listening to music). The report, as evidenced by the title, emphasizes the longer span of time devoted to total media use. For the purposes of my argument, I am noting the time that teens spend using screens, specifically.
Another first-of-its-kind study: John S. Hutton et al., “Shared Reading Quality and Brain Activation During Story Listening in Preschool-Age Children” Pediatrics, December 2017, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2017.08.037.
“You’re getting a little bit cooking”: Hutton, interview.
the Goldilocks effect: John S. Hutton et al., “Goldilocks Effect? Illustrated Story Format Seems ‘Just Right’ and Animation ‘Too Hot’ for Integration of Functional Brain Networks in Preschool-Age Children,” https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018–05/pas-nsm042618.php.
What children don’t get from one: Horowitz-Kraus, “Brain Connectivity in Children.”
“unfairly disadvantaging”: Adam Swift, interview by Joe Gelonesi, “Is Having a Loving Family an Unfair Advantage?,” Philosopher’s Zone, ABC, May 1, 2015, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/new-family-values/6437058.
Swift was using the phrase: Adam Swift, email exchange with author, May 2015.
calling “Goodnight Moon time”: Putnam, Our Kids, 126–27.
“differences in parenting”: Putnam, 123.
A 2012 study: “The First Eight Years: Giving Kids a Foundation for Lifetime Success,” Annie E. Casey Foundation, November 2013. Cited in (among others) Michael Alison Chandler, “Children from Poor Families Lag in Cognitive Development and Other Areas, Report Says,” Washington Post, November 3, 2013. See also, Putnam, Our Kids, 127.
the word gap: This famous phrase entered the academic lexicon with the publication of C. Hart and T. Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children (Baltimore: Brookes, 1995).
A 2017 study put the number: Jill Gilkerson et al., “Mapping the Early Language Environment Using All-Day Recordings and Automated Analysis,” American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 26 (May 2017), https://doi.org/10.1044/2016_AJSLP-15–0169.
two classroom subjects might seem on the surface to have little in common: Consider the commonly held notion that one is either a “math person” or a “language person,” or perhaps just “better at math.” In America, at least, we tend to imagine that any given person’s talent leans toward one or the other. In fact, the two disciplines have important qualities in common, not least the skills we need to understand them.
“If you can’t do fifth-grade reading problems”: Candace Kendle, phone interview by author, late February 2016. John Hutton is the “spokesdoctor” of Kendle’s campaign, Read Aloud 15 MINUTES, http://read aloud.org/.
As CEO of a clinical research organization: In 1981 Kendle cofounded Kendle International, a clinical research and drug development company, serving as its chief executive officer from 1981 to 2011.
The numbers may be worse: 2015 Mathematics & Reading Assessments, The Nation’s Report Card, https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading _math_2015/#reading?grade=4.
Something like 20 percent: The statistics in this paragraph are widely quoted and have their origins in an April 2002 report, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics (https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf), and were confirmed by a 2013 international survey published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, cited here: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/08/us-adults-rank-below-average-global-survey-basic-education-skills.
“We could narrow the achievement gap”: Rosemary Wells, email exchange with the author, August 2017.
56 percent of families reported: Kids & Family Reading Report, 6th ed. (New York: Scholastic, 2017), http://www.scholastic.com/readingreport/reading-aloud.htm.
the numbers are actually dropping: Alison Flood, “Only Half of Pre-School Children Being Read to Daily, UK Study Finds,” Guardian, February 21, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/21/only-half-of-pre-school-children-being-read-to-daily-study-finds.
“Any time, any place”: The Family Reading Partnership, Ithaca, NY, www.familyreading.org.
“Though books were scarce”: Roger McGough, quoted in Antonia Fraser, ed., The Pleasure of Reading (London: Bloomsbury, 1992), 138. Cited in Maria Tatar, Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 226.
Chapter 2: Where It All Began: Once Upon a Time in the Ancient World
a glossy black-and-ocher amphora: It can be seen on the British Museum website at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=399287&partId=1.
“stitcher of songs”: For a brief description of this term, and the role of the rhapsode, see http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100418375.
the sheer size of the thing: My paperback edition of Homer’s Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin, 1998), weighs in at two pounds exactly, and it’s two inches thick. A hefty tome indeed!
recite onward without a hitch: Gregory Nagy, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013), 246–47.
“the liquid tapestry”: This wonderful expression appears in Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories (New York: Penguin, 1991). For storytelling as one of the great human universals, see Donald Brown, The Human Universals (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991).
So far as we can tell: We see prehistoric cave paintings in Sister Wendy and Patricia Wright, Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting (New York: DK, 1994).
Gilgamesh: https://www.ancient.eu/gilgamesh/.
Mahabharata: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mahabharata.
Ramayana: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ramayana-Indian-epic.
Beowulf: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Beowulf.
Völsunga saga: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Volsunga-saga.
Sundiata: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Sundiata.
Mabinogion: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mabinogion.
The Thousand and One Nights: https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Thousand-and-One-Nights.
Kalevala: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kalevala.
Long before Johannes Gutenberg: Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (New York: Penguin, 2014), 59–60.
To read at all was to read out loud: Manguel, 43, 45.
the “primordial” languages of the Bible: Manguel, 45.
“Much merit is supposed to be derived”: Joseph
Edwin Patfield, The Hindu at Home: Being Sketches of Hindu Daily Life (Ann Arbor, MI: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1896), 178.
Plutarch writes of the way that Alexander: Manguel, History of Reading, 43.
the old man’s peculiar technique: Augustine quoted in Manguel, 43.
“For Augustine”: Manguel, 45.
Yet as Dante observed: Manguel, 251.
about 14 percent of the world’s adult population: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/fs45-literacy-rates-continue-rise-generation-to-next-en-2017_0.pdf.
“It was . . . and it was not”: Maria Tatar, phone interview by author, March 26, 2017.
“Who can catalog the myriad ways”: Laura Miller, The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia (New York: Little, Brown, 2008), 284.
One autumn afternoon not so long ago: Author visit to the Bard Competition, October 30, 2015, Heights School, Potomac, MD.
“After crying a good deal”: Charles Dickens, The Letters of Charles Dickens (New York: Macmillan, 1893), 463.
“a remarkably good fellow”: Dickens, Letters, 463.
His readers in the United States: This celebrated incident is recorded, among other places, by Richard Lederer, “Remembering the Great Charles Dickens,” Language Magazine, https://www.languagemagazine.com/the-great-charles-dickens/.
In the time of Dickens: Abigail Williams, The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 77.
“People shared their literature”: Williams, 10.
From a commonplace diversion: Williams, 14–15, 34, 147.
“like an ignorant Boy”: Williams, 84.
“Though she perfectly understands the characters”: Patricia Howell Michaelson, “Reading Pride and Prejudice,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 3 (October 1990): 65–76, http://ecf.humanities.mcmaster.ca/3_1michaelson/.
“I would ask that you imagine”: Manguel, History of Reading, 257.
The Enchanted Hour Page 23