“Fuming, Harry
descended the stairs to Snap’s dungeon... ”
Moments ago in my family’s car, the 10-year-old and 16-year-old were bickering
about whether the 10- year-old sings with a fake Scottish accent. Now they sit
silently as, in the front passenger seat, I read
aloud from Harry Potter and
the Order of the Phoenix. I pause for a sip of water. Ten-year-old: “You
have part of a pita chip stuck in your braces.”
Sixteen-year-old: “No, I don’t…”Water bottle down. Book up. “‘You’re
late, Potter,’ said Snape coldly, as Harry closed the door behind
him… ” And while all hell
breaks loose at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, quiet reigns
again in the backseat. Sure, we all know it’s important to read
aloud to small children. But how about big kids, and even adults? I’m
one of many who love this old-school pastime—and not just because
it’s the best car-ride peacekeeper since rocking out to
the radio. Among the other top reasons to make reading a social event...
1. Intimacy
It’s
no coincidence that any number of romantic scenes in movies (Bull Durham, Sense
and Sensibility, Bright Star, Groundhog Day—I could go on)
feature adults reading or reciting to each other. Plenty of real-life couples
make it a ritual. “It feels nurturing to be read to as an adult,”
says my friend Karen Page. She and her husband, Andrew Dornenburg, co-write
culinary books by day; at night, they read aloud from novels. “It’s
like giving a gift to the other person, an act of generosity at the end of the
day. It gives us an opportunity to bring something to life with our voices and
emotions. And it deepens our relationship, giving each of us one more thing to love
about the other.”
2. Vividness
Reading aloud involves more
parts of the brain thanreading silently, says William Graves, Ph.D., a psychologist
at Rutgers University. “Meaning-related [semantic] areas of the brain are
activated in both, but reading aloud or listening to reading also engages
auditory areas and speech production areas.” Science has yet to
discover whether this difference has cognitive perks. But to Graves and others,
it seems clear it can boost your appreciation of a book. “Reading
aloud forces you to pay attention to the sound of words, how the sound of one
word fits with another. You’re not just focusing
on the meaning, which you would primarily do when reading silently.”
Another reward: “I feel like sometimes the images that writers are
trying to convey end up being more vivid after hearing it read aloud or reading
it aloud yourself.” Small wonder that for so many of us, fantasy books
are popular read-aloud choices, as are works from the days when almost all
stories and poems, written or not, were shared orally. When you read
Shakespeare aloud, Graves points out, you and your audience hear his words as
he intended. “That’s an important part
of the experience.”
3. Comfort
In my mother’s
last months, she couldn’t read much to herself without losing focus. But she
enjoyed having family members read to her by the hour—and
often seemed to forget her pain in the process. This let us simply relish each
other’s company for a change. Plus, it helped give her the
illusion of leaving her bed for the wider world. One day when I was reading her
Agnes de Mille’s Where the Wings Grow, doing my best to render the
accents of the various characters, Mom chuckled and turned to my husband. “I
love hearing her read,” she told him. “She goes all over the
world with her mouth.”
4. Learning
Silent reading is great, too,
of course. It’s enriched my family’s
lives in countless ways. Even so, reading aloud can have an educational edge.
If my kids had read the Harry Potter books on their own, who knows how long it
would have taken them to realize that words like “jumper”
and “trainers” mean something different
in England—or to correctly pronounce words like “malady”
and “exchequer”? More important,
they might not have had thoughtful conversations with their parents on topics
such as, “Why didn’t Harry and his
friends tell a grown-up, instead of fighting the Death Eaters by themselves again?”
5. Cuteness
My kids will blush, but I can’t
resist mentioning that nothing’s more adorable than
your offspring reading to you while channeling the likes of Hagrid the half- giant.
How could TV possibly compete? And speaking of TV…
My family watches the tube with the best of them. We’ve
even been known to do it during dinner, which is why, afterward, I often suggest
a little read-aloud time. To paraphrase Page, watching TV makes us tune each
other out—but reading aloud does the opposite. And if it occasionally
sparks fights about whether, say, Hermione in Harry Potter is as smart as Alex
on Modern Family, well, some arguments are worth having.
You’ve
probably said it to yourself 100 times before: I really need to start reading
more. Well, you can. Check out 5 tips that'll make it easy for you to read more
books.
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