Monthly Archives: September 2009

Reading matters

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I’ve often wondered how much money we save by using the library so much. Apparently, its value to us is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000.00 a month! Of course we’d never spend that much on books every month, but I guess the point is that the library permits extravagant habits.

Try this calculator to find out the value of your library use. It’s from a spreadsheet developed by the Massachusetts Library Association, adapted for the web by the Chelmsford Public Library.

Speaking of books, I’ve been musing over the question of how to teach reading, now that my 8-year-old has the basic skills.

Vision-casting: Yesterday, I posted this as my “food for thought” quote:

If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

How do I do that with reading? How do I teach longing for “the endless immensity” of the imaginative world? It’s really not about loving books, but loving certain things that books afford:

  • private, timeless, inward reflection;
  • who we are, against the different backdrops books provide in ideas and situations;
  • submissiveness to, and respect for, another’s train of thought.

I could go on and on, but these are at the top of my list at the moment.

We’ve always read lots of stories aloud, and I continue to do so. There’s a love for stories successfully taking root in both kids. The question is how to begin fostering some reading independence in Older Daughter. Last year, I enforced silent reading for 30 minutes a day in the afternoon, then again at bedtime. She could keep the light on, as long as she was reading.

Free vs. required reading: I’m thinking maybe I should use that daytime reading period to “assign” a book — or offer a group of books for her to choose from, maybe ones that relate to what we’re doing in history or science…? Everything I’ve read stresses the importance of giving students a choice for their “free reading” time, and not assigning books. But maybe the bedtime reading should be “free,” and the daytime reading “assigned.” This would ensure that during some of her reading time, she’s getting something that will stretch her and build some skill, and not just reading the simplest picture books. It would also give me a chance to make sure she’s really reading, not skipping through and reading only the interesting parts.

Journal: We make narration pages for about two books a week, though we read more than that. Maybe I could set a loose guideline that one of these can be a pure-pleasure book, perhaps a picture book, and the other needs to be a chapter book…? Or should I stay out of the way?

Reading aloud: I also wonder if she should be doing more reading aloud. Growing up in public school, this is what we did, at least through second grade. So far this year, I’ve been having her read aloud the texts in science and writing, which are written for a third grade level. Only once so far has she told me I’m torturing her. (Why? She reads beautifully.)

Seeing Past Z impressed on me the importance of giving kids space in these matters. Not everyone will become a book lover. But I’m unsure how that works out with a child who loves stories, but not necessarily wrestling her way through a book on her own. There needs to be encouragement and development of skill, but the question is just how to make it happen without transforming “longing for the endless immensity of the sea” into mere “tasks and work.”

Nurturing the imagination

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Seeing Past Z: Nurturing the Imagination in a Fast-Forward World is a memoir. It offers Beth Kephart’s experience as a mother cultivating in her child a love of reading, reflection, and imaginative vitality. The book spans several years, and we come to know and respect her for her ability to stand back and give her son room to develop.

Those of us who value the imagination, and the need for children to have unstructured, undirected time for it to develop, feel we’re listening to a kindred spirit in this book. Besides appreciating this encouraging story of a gifted young man maturing, I liked Kephart’s gentleness with Jeremy. Even though it mattered to her very much that he would awaken to the magic of books, she allowed him to move at his own pace. She read to him, and, when he continued to prefer being read to rather than picking up a book himself, she continued to read to him. She even offered an extra-curricular literary group for him and his classmates, in fourth grade and for several summers afterward. (The back of the book provides ideas and resources for such an endeavor.)

I couldn’t help but remember the experience Sven Birkerts describes in The Gutenberg Elegies. He recounts a college literature class in which the students simply could not bridge the gap to read Henry James. How different the fourth graders in this story are! They’re a raucously enthusiastic bunch. I guess the moral is, get them young. And hope for someone as able as Ms. Kephart to step in and lend a hand.

There are a number of parenting definitions scattered throughout the book where Ms. Kephart recasts the aims and hopes of parents. A few examples:

My job as his parent is the job of every parent — to keep giving him more of the world. To thread it in and through, strand by annealing, instructive strand. To make room for him to marvel, shift, consider, and weigh; to enter other people’s stories and begin to tell his own.

I want Jeremy to grow up poking his fingers through the web of mysteries, hoping for the unexpected, taking pleasure or conviction or understanding from what he finds.

Parenting is fractionally commonsensical. The rest is improvisation and soul.

They’re like different pairs of glasses to try on and look at this chapter of life that I’m so immersed in right now, it’s easy to lose the big picture. I should point out, though, that you don’t need to be a parent to find these essays appealing. Anyone who’s protested the reconfiguration of childhood in America as a structured, scheduled phenomenon, and anyone who thinks there’s more to life than math and science, will find themselves nodding their way along.

I enjoyed the glimpse into writing and writing process as well. This, for instance, is an excerpt from a generous passage on wordcraft:

I tell [my son] I try to keep some words in mind when I write from life: Explore as opposed to trump. Suggest instead of prove. Protest, not pronounce. Propose, not demand. Discuss, not win. Record, not brag. I tell him that I think it all comes down to motivation in the end, to compassion, and that sometimes I know I fail at this, sometimes I worry…

The quietly lyrical writing throughout this book — what Lauren Winner describes on the back cover as Kephart’s “inimitable velvet prose” — testifies to the reliability of such sound insight. For an inspiring series of reflections that achieve their effect without preaching, Seeing Past Z is a nourishing read.