The Enchanted Hour

by Meghan Cox Gurdon

  “Cheerful . . . Stern . . . Pathos”: Manguel, 257–58.

  While Dickens was entertaining audiences: Dickens famously undertook grueling book tours between the years 1858 and 1867, including a lucrative sojourn to the United States. The author writes about his experiences in Dickens, Letters. See also Matt Shinn, “Stage Frights,” Guardian, January 30, 2004, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2004/jan/31/theatre.classics.

  “We were never able to be sure”: Christopher W. Czajka, “How the West Was Fun: Recreation and Leisure Time on the Frontier,” Frontier House, PBS, https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/frontierhouse/frontierlife/essay9.html.

  “Come girls”: Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter, illustrated by Garth Williams (New York: Harper Trophy, 1994), 171.

  “After a moment Mary said”: Wilder, 174–75.

  “‘You girls choose a story’”: Wilder, 184–85.

  In 1865, as Alberto Manguel recounts: Manguel, History of Reading, 110–14.

  “In the mornings, he read”: Ann L. Henderson, Gary R. Mormino, and Carols J. Cano, eds., Spanish Pathways in Florida/Los Caminos Espanioles en la Florida, 1492–1992 (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1992), 284.

  The Count of Monte Cristo: Manguel, History of Reading, 113.

  An 1873 magazine sketch: From the Practical Magazine, New York, reprinted in Manguel, 112.

  first recording of the human voice: For a brief description of the incident, and Edison’s view of it, see “Edison Reading ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’” Public Domain Review, http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/edison-reading-mary-had-a-little-lamb-1927/.

  The original phonograph track: Lisa Brenner, “Hear Thomas Edison’s Earliest Known Recording from 1878 for the First Time (Audio),” KPCC radio website, October 25, 2012, http://www.scpr.org/blogs/news/2012/10/25/10712/hear-thomas-edison-sing-rare-1878-audio-restored-f/.

  These readers were inhuman: Matthew Rubery, interview by author, London, June 22, 2016.

  “There was a real sense”: Matthew Rubery, The Untold Story of the Talking Book (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

  The first full-length recorded books: Matthew Rubery, “Another Historic Talking Book Found,” Audiobook History (blog), November 28, 2016, https://audiobookhistory.wordpress.com/author/mattrubery/.

  For the war-blind: Rubery, interview.

  Not until the mid-1970s: Matthew Rubery, “What Is the History of Audiobooks?,” symposium discussion excerpted on Center for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh, August 21, 2015, https://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/chb/books-and-new-media/dr-matthew-rubery.

  Audiobook enthusiasts were inclined: Rubery told me that he became interested in the topic of audiobooks when a distinctly nonacademic friend of his father’s “got very excited and wanted to tell me he’d read a book. And then he got apologetic and said, Well, actually I didn’t read it, I listened to it. . . . It didn’t matter to me, but I did think about that apology and noticed it everywhere after that. And I wanted to get to the roots of that curious shame. Why would the experience of listening to a book be treated differently than the experience of reading a book? It’s viewed as cheating all the time.” Rubery, interview.

  a $3.5 billion industry: Michael Kozlowski, “Global Audiobook Trends and Statistics for 2017,” Goodereader.com, December 18, 2016, https://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/audiobook-trends-and-statistics-for-2017. See also Tom Webster, “Monthly Podcast Consumption Surges to More Than One in Five Americans,” Edison Research, March 7, 2016, http://www.edisonresearch.com/monthly-podcast-consumption-surges-to-more-than-one-in-five-americans/.

  the shift in acceptability: Kevin Roose, “What’s Behind the Great Podcast Renaissance?,” New York magazine, October 30, 2014, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/whats-behind-the-great-podcast-renaissance.html.

  It was a sign: Rubery, interview.

  a hipster resurgence: Calvin Reid, “HarperAudio Goes Retro with New Vinyl Audiobook Series,” Publishers Weekly, January 18, 2018, https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/audio-books/article/75843-harperaudio-goes-retro-with-new-vinyl-audiobook-series.html.

  Most new cars now come fitted: Roose, “What’s Behind the Great Podcast Renaissance?”

  “People who like audiobooks often try”: Rubery, interview.

  a scene in The Odyssey: Homer, Odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald, book 9, viewable at http://mbci.mb.ca/site/assets/files/1626/homer_sodyssey.pdf.

  If we are wise: Maria Tatar, Beauty and the Beast: Classic Tales About Animal Brides and Grooms from Around the World (New York: Penguin, 2017), 21.

  Chapter 3: Reading Together Strengthens the Bonds of Love

  Apple tablet had been on the market: Roger Fingas, “A Brief History of the iPad, Apple’s Once and Future Tablet,” Apple Insider, April 3, 2018, https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/03/a-brief-history-of-the-ipad-apples-once-and-future-tablet.

  Goodnight iPad: David Milgrim, Goodnight iPad (New York: Blue Rider, 2011).

  Rare is the household: Adam Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (New York: Penguin, 2017), 13–19.

  “the latest and most powerful extension”: Virginia Heffernan, Magic and Loss (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), 21.

  “a massive and collaborative work”: Heffernan, 8.

  Screens have rushed into childhood: Jean Twenge, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?,” Atlantic, September 2017, https://www.the atlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/.

  According to Jean Twenge: Jean Twenge, “What Might Explain the Unhappiness Epidemic?,” The Conversation, January 22, 2018, http://the conversation.com/what-might-explain-the-unhappiness-epidemic-90212.

  “We found that teens”: Twenge.

  We adults, meanwhile: Alter, Irresistible, 15.

  “You are picking up your child!”: Lucia I. Suarez Sang, “‘Get Off Your Phone!!’ Daycare’s Message to Parents Goes Viral,” Fox News, February 1, 2017, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/02/01/get-off-your-phone-day-cares-message-to-parents-goes-viral.html.

  “technoference”: B. T. McDaniel, and J. S. Radesky, “Technoference: Parent Distraction with Technology and Associations with Child Behavior Problems,” Child Development 89 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12822.

  “I feel like, ughhh, sad”: Steiner-Adair, Big Disconnect, 13.

  “Our household is eerily silent”: Steiner-Adair, 27.

  the interactions of thirty middle-class Los Angeles families: Belinda Campos et al., “Opportunity for Interaction? A Naturalistic Observation Study of Dual-Earner Families after Work and School,” Journal of Family Psychology 23, no. 6 (2009), https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015824. Cited in Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014), 167–69.

  “Despite the mountain of evidence”: Susan Pinker, email exchange with author, June 2, 2017.

  “I could feel her voice”: Quoted in Tatar, Enchanted Hunters, 231.

  “a whole bouquet of neurochemicals”: Quoted in Alter, Irresistible, 228–29.

  “A tsunami of neurochemical benefits”: Pinker, email exchange.

  “The script is right there”: Katrina Morse, acting director, Family Reading Partnership, Ithaca NY, interview by author, April 25, 2016.

  a team of neuroscientists at Princeton has discovered: Greg J. Stephens, Lauren J. Silbert, and Uri Hasson, “Speaker-Listener Neural Coupling Underlies Successful Communication,” PNAS 107, no. 32 (August 10, 2010): 14425–30, http://www.pnas.org/content/107/32/14425. Cited in Geoff Colvin, Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know that Brilliant Machines Never Will (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2016), 152.

  “Storyteller and hearer are connecting”: Colvin, 152.

  “kind of conspiracy”: Mem Fox, Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever (Orlando, FL: Harco
urt, 2001), 10.

  “When I got here”: Claire Nolan, interview by author, Georgetown University Hospital NICU, April 6, 2017.

  “We know that parental voice is important”: Dr. Mohammed Kabir Abubakar, interview by author, April 25, 2016.

  Writing about a 2011 experiment there: Maude Beauchemin et al., “Mother and Stranger: An Electrophysiological Study of Voice Processing in Newborns,” Cerebral Cortex 21, no. 8 (2011), https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhq242. Cited in Pinker, Village Effect, 127.

  “the language circuitry in a newborn’s brain”: Pinker, 127.

  The earlier a child arrives: Dr. K. N. Siva Subramanian, Georgetown University Hospital, interview by author, April 28, 2016.

  A baby born at even thirty-six weeks: Jennifer E. McGowan et al., “Early Childhood Development of Late-Preterm Infants: A Systematic Review,” Pediatrics 127, no. 6 (2011), https://doi.org/10.1542/peds/2010.2257.

  in concert with the human voice: “Even premature infants are sensitive to social context and will vocalize in the neonatal intensive care unit significantly more when a parent is present.” Roberta Michnick Golinkoff et al., “(Baby) Talk to Me: The Social Context of Infant-Directed Speech and Its Effects on Early Language Acquisition,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 24, no. 5 (2015), https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721415595345.

  In the spring of 2017: Details and findings of the Georgetown University Hospital investigation in Siva, interview; Dr. Suna Seo and Abubakar, interviews.

  “Inside the incubator it gets really humid”: Seo, interview.

  The doctors and nurses at Georgetown: Abubakar, interview.

  Their voices are a kind of curative: Pinker, Village Effect, 126–27.

  “Reading promotes better interaction”: Abubakar, interview.

  The story of one Georgetown NICU patient: Lori Green, conversation with the author, December 3, 2015, details confirmed in email exchanges, February 15–21, 2017.

  the healing analgesic: This phrase is gratefully adapted from one used by Susan Pinker, “homegrown analgesic for babies,” to describe the effects of skin-to-skin bonding, or kangaroo care. Pinker, Village Effect, 130.

  There’s no retrieving those files: This phenomenon is known as “childhood amnesia.” A short explanation can be found here: Janice Wood, “What’s Your Earliest Memory?” Psychcentral.com, https://psychcentral.com/news/2014/01/26/whats-your-earliest-memory/64982.html.

  “One of the unexpected joys”: Bruce Handy, Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), xvi–xvii.

  “Aside from the immediate pleasure”: Handy, 265.

  One woman told me how: Tayla Burney, quoted in Gurdon, “Great Gift.”

  “She also had a box”: Beatrice Frum, conversation with the author, 2015.

  Tolkien describes the possessions: J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (New York: Mariner/HMH, 1994), 36–37.

  Marine Corps commandant Robert Neller: Remarks at the Fourth Annual Tribute to Military Families under the auspices of United Through Reading, Washington, DC, May 24, 2017.

  was the first to track: Sarah O. Meadows et al., “The Deployment Life Study: Longitudinal Analysis of Military Families Across the Deployment Cycle,” Rand Corporation, 2016, https://doi.org/10.7249/RR1388.

  “Jack, my youngest”: Alice Kirke, phone interview by author, November 11, 2016; interview by author, May 24, 2017; email exchanges, late May/early June 2017. Also Kevin Kirke, interview by author, May 24, 2017.

  The military charity that facilitated: Kenneth Miller, “A Soldier’s Last Bedtime Story,” Reader’s Digest, March 2017, 83.

  “Every time they got new books”: Taylor Monaco, phone interview by author, November 11, 2016.

  In 2017, UTR surveyed”: United Through Reading Beneficiary Surveys, 2017: From the Homefront: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5RV85B5; From the Participants: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RPXL2Y9?sm=4uavMbpf4YADv5uu9%2bdcGA%3d%3d.

  “It’s the culture of shared stories”: Monaco, interview.

  Some 2.7 million American children: David Murphey and P. Mae Cooper, “Parents Behind Bars: What Happens to Their Children?,” ChildTrends.org, October 2015. Cited in Nash Jenkins, “1 in 14 U.S. Children Has Had a Parent in Prison, Says New Study,” Time magazine, October 27, 2015.

  Nonprofits active in: These include the Women’s Storybook Project of Texas (storybookproject.org), the Lutheran Social Services of Illinois (lssi.org), the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester (NY) Storybook Project (prisonministry-edr.org), and Storybook Dads UK (storybookdads.org.uk). See also Kristin Sample, “Helping Prisoners’ Voices Be Heard by Their Children,” New York Times, July 6, 2015, https://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/06/capturing-the-voices-of-mothers-in-prison.

  The great-grandmother of the movement: Aunt Mary’s Storybook/Companions Journeying Together (cjtinc.org), Western Springs, IL.

  “From the womb, the children know”: Stuie Brown, phone interview by author, January 29, 2016.

  Tempting though it may be: It is common sense that emotional bonds can be stronger or weaker; we all know this from our own lives. The fluctuating nature of attachment, and the fact that we can take steps to fortify it, inheres in such studies as Kenneth Ginsburg et al., “The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Devlopment and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds, Pediatrics 119, no. 1 (January 2007), http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/1/182.short; and Juulia [sic] Suvilehto et al., “Topography of Social Touching Depends on Emotional Bonds Between Humans,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, November 10, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1519231112.

  “We read him board books”: Danica Rommely, phone interview by author, May 25, 2016; interview by author, January 17, 2017; follow-up emails, January 19–25, 2017.

  Hello. . . . Meghan . . . how are you: Gabe Rommely, Danica Rommely, and Najla, interview by author, January 17, 2017.

  Everything had changed for the family: Colby Itkowitz, “Saying So Much Without a Sound,” Washington Post, May 23, 2016.

  “a drunken toddler”: Itkowitz.

  “the kindness of machines”: Judith Newman, To Siri with Love: A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of Machines (New York: Harper, 2017).

  Chapter 4: Turbocharging Child Development with Picture Books

  For a brief and happy period: For a succinct explanation of this delightful phase, see “Your 5-Month-Old Baby: Learning About Object Permanence,” What to Expect, updated February 27, 2015, https://www.whattoexpect.com/first-year/month-by-month/your-child-month-5.aspx.

  Reading to children during this: Adriana Weisleder and Anne Fernald, “Talking to Children Matters: Early Language Experience Strengthens Processing and Builds Vocabulary,” Psychological Science 24 (November 2013), https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613488145.

  “the nightly miracle”: Shirley Jackson, Life Among the Savages (New York: Penguin, 1997), 129.

  “Yet long before a baby”: Pinker, Village Effect, 127.

  that is the assumption: Abubakar, interview.

  “Language comes at us”: Morten Christiansen, Cornell University, Skype interview with author, April 27, 2016.

  “mapping”: Daniel Swingley, “Fast Mapping and Slow Mapping in Children’s Word Learning,” Language Learning and Development 6 (2010): 179–83, https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2010.484412.

  If two adults: “A large literature indicates that talk directed to the child—rather than adult-adult or background talk—is the core data on which early language learning depends (e.g. Weisleder & Fernald, 2014).” Jessica Montag, Michael N. Jones, and Linda B. Smith, “The Words Children Hear: Picture Books and the Statistics for Language Learning,” Psychological Science 26, no. 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615594361.

  in a responsive way: Golinkoff et al., “(Baby) Talk to Me,” 6.

  “learn their native tongue”: Golinkoff, 4.

  the distinctive t
rills of its kind: Alison J. Doupe and Patricia Kuhl, “Birdsong and Human Speech: Common Themes and Mechanisms,” Annual Review of Neuroscience 22 (1999), https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.22.1.567. Cited in Lisa Guernsey, Into the Minds of Babes (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 143.

  “If a bird doesn’t hear the tutor”: Quoted in Lisa Duchene, “Probing Question: How Do Songbirds Learn to Sing?,” Penn State News, October 15, 2007, http://news.psu.edu/story/141326/2007/10/15/research/probing-question-how-do-songbirds-learn-sing.

  “There’s a lot of language learning”: Christiansen, Skype interview.

  Infants also learn from seeing: Joni N. Saby, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Peter J. Marshall, “Infants Somatotopic Neural Responses to Seeing Human Actions: I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” PloS One 8, no. 10 (2013). Also Joni N. Saby, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Peter J. Marshall, “Neural Correlates of Being Imitated: An EEG Study in Preverbal Infants,” Social Neuroscience 7, no. 6 (2012). Both cited in Pinker, Village Effect, 126–27.

  warehousing orphans from infancy onward: For a thorough discussion of the heartbreaking plight of these children, see Charles A. Nelson, Nathan A. Fox, and Charles H. Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children: Deprivation, Brain Development, and the Struggle for Recovery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).

  suffering from a constellation of psychological, neurological, and biological impairments: Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, 181.

  “When the child vocalizes”: Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, 140–41.

  “Fun and kid-friendly iPhone applications”: Cheryl Lock, “Best iPhone Apps for Babies and Toddlers,” Parents, https://www.parents.com/fun/entertainment/gadgets/the-best-iphone-apps-for-babies-and-toddlers/.

  “games made for your iPhone, iPad, and Android”: Christen Brandt, Cheryl Lock, and Chrisanne Grise, “The Best Educational Apps for Kids,” Parents, https://www.parents.com/fun/entertainment/gadgets/best-educational-apps-for-kids/.

  They are no match for us: Steiner-Adair, Big Disconnect, 69, 77.

  team at the University of Virginia: JAMA and Archives Journals, “Infants Do Not Appear to Learn Words from Educational DVDs.” Science Daily, March 6, 2010, accessed April 7, 2018, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100301165612.htm.