“Kids need to be bombarded with books. Through books they can go anywhere, be anyone.” — Lauranne Billus, librarian
Lauranne Billus and I sit on tiny
wooden chairs in the library of Violet Avenue Elementary School in Poughkeepsie
where she has been the school librarian for 12 years. We are both laughing as
she reads aloud to me from “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus” by Mo Willems.
She is clearly enjoying herself and so am I. I had forgotten how much pleasure
being read to brings.
“Reading has to be seen as fun,” Billus says.
“Too many things compete for kids’ attention. If they don’t enjoy it they won’t
become readers.”
And becoming readers is integral to
succeeding in school and in the world.
“The biggest gap I see academically
between students who read at home and those who do not is vocabulary,” says
Billus. “The amount of words they know increases kids’ ability to keep up at school,
and reading books aloud builds vocabulary.”

Lauranne Billus, librarian at Violet Avenue Elementary
School in Poughkeepsie displays some of her favorite books to read aloud.
“Reading has to be seen as fun,” she says. “Too many things compete for kids’
attention. If they don’t enjoy it they won’t become readers.”
Start early
Stanford University found an
“intellectual processing gap” that appears in children as young as 18 months
and is directly related to vocabulary and the number of words kids hear. By age
3, some children heard roughly 30 million fewer words than their peers.
“Children who are read to in
utero by their parents will recognize and turn toward their parents’ voices at
birth,” says Billus. Reading aloud to kids stimulates their brain development as
well as speech/language development.
Reading aloud also increases story
comprehension.
“Reading allows kids to see
things in sequence, anticipate, learn about the world and themselves,” says
Lisa Prentiss, children’s program coordinator at the Staatsburgh Library.
Prentiss spent the summer reading
aloud to kids at Adventure Day Camp at Hackett Hill in Hyde Park. Every
Wednesday, kids in two age groups were treated to library time with her or a
volunteer school librarian. The program, made possible by a grant through the
Mid-Hudson Library System, incorporated read-aloud time, craft time and a
satellite library at the camp.
“When kids are at camp and
parents are at work, it’s hard to get library time,” Prentiss says. “So we
brought the books to them.”

Lisa Prentiss, children’s program coordinator at
the Staatsburgh Library, spent the summer reading aloud to kids at Adventure
Day Camp at Hackett Hill in Hyde Park. “When kids are at camp and parents are
at work, it’s hard to get library time,” Prentiss says. “So we brought the
books to them.”
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Medical benefits
Reading aloud has proven so
important in childhood development that the American Academy of Pediatrics’
Council instituted a policy this year stating that literacy promotion should be
part of residency training for medical students entering pediatrics.
Checking on families’ reading
habits, it has determined, is an essential component of primary care pediatric
practice. The policy, aimed at immunizing children against illiteracy,
recognizes that more than one of every three American children starts
kindergarten without the language skills needed to learn to read. In fact, children’s
reading proficiency by third grade is a good predictor of their success later
in life.
In addition to increased
vocabulary and comprehension, reading allows kids to navigate the world and
their own emotions better. When children suffer a loss, say a grandparent dying
or parents divorcing, the right book can help them process their feelings.
Librarians are expert resources
for this. From dealing with loss to food allergies, if there is a situation a
child faces in life, there is likely a book dealing with the issue.
“Kids can learn so much from
books,” says Billus. “Our teachers [at Violet Avenue] are especially attuned to
students’ emotional lives and will ask me which books will help address particular
issues. Books provide a way for parents and teachers to relate to their kids.”
‘Read-Aloud’ movement
Jim Trelease has been at the
forefront of the Read-Aloud movement since authoring his instrumental book,
“The Read-Aloud Handbook,” in 1982. By 1985, the U.S. Department of Education's
Commission on Reading was calling "reading aloud to children" the
single most important activity one could do to raise a reader.
The seventh edition of “The
Read-Aloud Handbook” was published in 2013 and included a chapter devoted to
technology and its challenges for literacy: iPads, e-books, and online reading
and learning.
Trelease points out that while
teachers, librarians, and now even doctors, are recognizing the importance of
reading aloud to kids, it’s the parents who can have the biggest influence on
their children’s reading behaviors.
Trelease calls children “little
sponges” who absorb the world around them. He points out that children will
replicate what they see. If they see you reading, they will want to read. It is
at home, and as Billus points out, way before kids ever set foot in a school,
that the love of reading is born.
“Kids need to be bombarded with
books,” Billus adds. “Through books they can go anywhere, be anyone.”
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Model behavior
“If we want our kids to be
readers, we need to model that behavior and be reading ourselves, and be reading
to them,” says Printess. And not just before bed for either of you. “Reading
should be interactive,” she adds. “Think about reading the story together. You
can have your child read the pictures and learn to associate pictures with
words. Even memorizing stories is a step in learning to read.”
Don’t know what to read to your
child? You can start with the books you loved as a child. Your love will come
through in the reading. But don’t force your child to read what you think they
should be reading. Let them discover. Billus urges parents to consult with
librarians. “We are book experts,” she says. “We know what kids respond to and
each book’s subject matter.”
As a parent, don’t think you are
simply reading to your child. You are teaching your child to love reading, to
build a strong vocabulary, to ignite imagination, to learn about the world and
themselves, to learn how to deal with difficult situations and most of all you
are creating a nurturing environment and associating pleasure with reading and
being with you.

Six-year-old Abby Foley, of Middletown, loves to read to her
dolls.
Interconnectivity of reading
Yuly Martinez-Foley of Middletown
has been working one-on-one with her 3-year-old son Zachary, using read-aloud
techniques recommended by his speech therapist.
“Among the benefits of reading
aloud to Zach is the synergy, visual connection, improvement of his pitch,
pronunciation and vocabulary. But even more important, it sets up time for the
two of us to be together as mother and child in the midst of my hectic
world."
It is that bond that is perhaps
one of the most emotionally satisfying elements of reading aloud with your
child.
“Kids are experiencing the world
for the first time,” says Billus, “Not only is your child learning but you are
learning about your child. Reading aloud and talking about the story opens the
door to conversations. It is sharing, it creates bonds.”
Part of the fun of reading aloud
is interconnectivity. Some readers use accents or inflection to animate the
story, but you don’t have to be a drama major to make the story come to life. As
Billus reads me the Willems book, she demonstrates how she engages the kids in
the story, asking them what they think will happen next, allowing them to take
a stake in the story’s unfolding. It is this engagement that makes the story
exciting and memorable, and creates lifelong readers.
“As a mom, it is so gratifying to
see my daughter who is 6 now reading to her little brother and to her dolls,”
says Martinez-Foley. “It shows that any effort we do to teach our kids will be
converted into amazing results."
Linda Freeman is a freelance writer living in Marlboro
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