Since writing his million-copy bestseller, The Read-Aloud Handbook, in 1982, Jim Trelease has traveled to all 50 states and abroad, advocating the benefits of reading aloud to children. In doing so, he’s won the applause of both teachers and parents for his pleas on behalf of literacy efforts. He recently wrote an essay for our Open a World of Possible initiative, reflecting upon an early experience with reading. We've repurposed the essay here. The full version is also available in our new Open a World of Possible book, which you can download for free here.
"I learned to read in first grade, St. Michael’s School, Union, New Jersey. My teacher was Sister Elizabeth Francis. There were 94 children in one classroom and the only aide Sister Elizabeth Francis had was the one hanging on the cross in the front of the room. We practiced phonics drills, read from a Dick and Jane reader, and did myriads of worksheet pages. Those covered the mechanics of reading. But the motivation to read, a far more important ingredient, came from elsewhere.
Like Scout and her father in To Kill a Mockingbird, my father would pull me onto his lap each night in our four-room apartment and read aloud the comics page from the Newark Evening News, explaining as best he could the strange relationships in “Li’l Abner” and “Rex Morgan, M.D.,” or the bossemployee contests between Dagwood and Mr. Dithers. He also read serialized novels from the week’s Saturday Evening Post. Added to that were the daily readings at 1 pm when Sister Elizabeth Francis stilled 94 hearts and lips with her chapter book readings of Wopsy—the story of a fledgling, and often inept, guardian angel.
The classroom mechanical drills were painfully boring for an active six-year old but the read-alouds had given me a reason to endure the drudgery. I’d been to the mountain top, enjoyed the view, and therefore knew what reading was really all about. Not long-As or short-Es. It was Nancy and Sluggo, Dick Tracy, and the Phantom. While most of my classmates were focused on Dick and Jane, I was looking ahead to Superman and Batman comics, Mad Magazine, and Classics Illustrated."
