Monday, June 18, 2012

Reading Aloud to Teens

My 20 yr old was bemoaning the fact that I never read her a bedtime story or tuck her into bed anymore. Are you kidding me? Well I haven't done that in like forever! She is lucky because there are 4 yrs between her and my son so she got a lot of mommy time. So I got to thinking that maybe I should start reading aloud to my big kids (20,15,14,12 and 11) and not just my little kids (7,5,3). I was also inspired by the story of the women with 6 kids that reads to her kids every night even now that they are big and they all get straight A's. But what would I read to them? First of all at my library book club the women mentioned that teen boys loves the Farley Mowat book; The Dog Who Wouldn't Be. My sons immediately said they didn't want to hear a book about dogs. I tried to understand their point of view. This would be more of a white,Christian boy type of book rather than a Mixed, Muslim guy type of book I guess. I can realize this as a convert but I might try to read it anyway to them to expand their horizons and to better understand their fellow Canadians and hey Farley Mowat is a famous Canadian author. Then I chose some myself that I thought would be interesting; Call of the Wild, (another dog book which they told me not to read, lol), Tom Sawyer which I am reading now and have never read before and only ever knew about the famous fence painting part. From the internet I got some good recommendations mostly from teachers. I couldn't find all of them at my library but from what I could get, here is a list; We All Fall Down- Robert Cormier, The 13 Clocks which I read to them and the teen boys absolutely loved and one keeps quoting from it, Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom which my 20 yr old can't wait for me to get started, The First Part Last by Angela Johnson which is about a teen father ( I was a teen mother twice over), The Color of Water by James McBride ( A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother), and Goodnight Mister Tom by Michele Magorian. I'm really enjoying reading to the kids but they keep complaining that I'm not doing any voices ie make a southern accent when you read Tom Sawyer. Apparently my son's teacher always does accents and different voices for different characters so I just don't measure up. Oh well, I'm having a blast.

3 comments:

  1. I read a lovely book recently called 'the Reading Promise'by Alice Ozma which tells of how her father started reading to her every night in 4th grade..and then continued to do so EVERY NIGHT till she left for college..even rushing home from events to get there before midnight..they called it 'the streak'..... My 8 year old loves to be read to and I'd love to carry on with it....if she lets me....lol...xx

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  2. I think she will let you based on my kids reaction. I've never read the book you mentioned...should check it out.

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  3. haha different voices, c'mon mom!

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