The enduring magic of reading out loud
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By the time my daughter reached high school, we had gradually abandoned the ritual without really noticing. Now that she's a junior, I spend more time reading excerpts to her from college prep books with names like 'Who Gets In and Why,' 'Soundbite: The Admissions Secret That Gets You Into College and Beyond,' and 'Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be.' Like everyone else, we binge-watch our share of comfort shows. 'Another one?' she says when an episode finishes.
Though there's not a lot of research on teens, many of the proven benefits of reading aloud to children may carry over. Young children aren't the only ones who need emotional regulation; teens are also going through a
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Reading aloud together feels like an oddly subversive act, given the siren call of screens and scrolling.
It forces us to slow down and pay attention. We humbly fumble our words sometimes. We hear beautiful sentences uttered aloud. We read timeless stories that make us feel less alone.
Reading aloud shouldn't be relegated to bedtime with young children. When my friend broke her ankle, I showed up at her door with a bag of pastries and an offer to read from a book of short reflections by Madeleine L'Engle. 'Please read another,' she told me when I'd finished one. My parents tell me they have read Leo Tolstoy's 'A Calendar of Wisdom' to each other at the kitchen table over breakfast. At a recent funeral, a friend shared a Louise Bogan poem she had also read aloud at the bedside of her dying mother.
Books offer us nuance, meaning, and things to 'weigh and consider,' in the words of Francis Bacon. Anne Lamott calls stories 'medicine, plaster casts for broken lives and hearts, slings for weakened spirits.' Perhaps reading them aloud to each other is the act of courage we all need right now.
Reading with my daughter over the years has given us a common vernacular, a collective imagination, and a lexicon of hope. That night before the SAT, I almost went in search of our old favorite picture books; instead, I picked a favorite book of mine, Walker Percy's 'The Moviegoer,' and positioned myself on her bed, noting how her feet touch the footboard now. It had been a long time since I'd sat there like that. I read and she laughed at all the right places. Percy has a wry sense of humor. 'Should I stop?' I asked her. 'No,' she said. 'A little more.'
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Julia Cho is a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among other publications.
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