The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction, written by Meghan Cox Gurdon
I've gotten out of the habit of reading aloud to my kids over the last few years, but I know it's really valuable and want to make it a priority again. Filled with evidence about how important it is for brains, relationships, and how we look at the world, this book was like a long pep talk to get me back on track.
p. 17, Eighty-five percent of kids who get into trouble with the law have poor literacy skills. Seventy percent of prisoners in state and federal institutions are in the same predicament, as are 43 percent of people living in poverty. < snip > Imagine how the world would look if every child had stories read aloud every night.
p. 108, Schoolwork, sports, friends, part-time jobs, and the hydra-headed temptations of technology will try to crowd out regular reading. Don't let it. This is a battle worth winning.
p. 150, So it goes. Youth is inattentive. It thinks itself something fresh, full of energy, spirit, and insight. It feels that no one has ever cared so much, felt with such intensity, or realized truth with such exquisite clarity. Youth may have no idea that it is wreathed in ghosts, informed by ghosts, held up on the shoulders of ghosts. When we read aloud from the literature of the past - and all literature is the literature of the past - and when we share artistic traditions, we are not merely giving children stories and pictures to enjoy. We're also inviting a measure of humility, gently correcting youth's eternal temptation to arrogance.
p. 167, There's a broad temptation to view the past through the prism of our contemporary attitudes and taboos - and to find its people shameful and wanting. We believe ourselves to be so much more enlightened; but, then, people always do.
p. 168 (quoting Walter Edmonds accepting accolades) The present is important, but today will be yesterday in less than twelve hours, just as a little over twelve hours ago it was an unpredictable tomorrow. This present that some of us get so het up about is less than the wink of an eyelid in the face of time. The past is as alive as we are."
p. 168, The ways that people live and think have altered, often for the better. Still, we are wise not to assume that of all the human beings ever born, we just happen to be the ones who've got it all right.
p. 172, We do children no service in cutting them off from transcendent works of the imagination, even if it means introducing them to troublesome ideas and assumptions, and to characters we would rather they not admire. Like life itself, literature is unruly. It raises moral, cultural, and philosophical questions. Well, where better to talk about these things than at home? The human story is messy and imperfect. It is full of color and peril, creation and destruction - of cruelty and villainy, prejudice and hatred, love and comedy, sacrifice and virtue. We needn't be afraid of it. It's foolish to cover it up and pretend history never happened. It is far better to talk about what we think of these matters with our children, using books as a starting point for the conversation.
p. 175, To defend classic literature is not to defend prejudice. It is to argue for sympathy, and an openness to the past as well as to the insistent present. It is to recognize that as we judge the people of former times, so shall we be judged by future ones. Attributes of our contemporary life that we think unimpeachable or unavoidable will be held up by generations yet to come as evidence of our limits, our stupidity, our profligacy, our lack of vision.
The Sunday Potluck Club, written by Melissa Storm
I decided to spend my post-nap Sunday afternoon reading and it turns out this book that coincidentally has "Sunday" in the title was just the fluff I needed. Friendship, grief, and romance combine in this fairly predictable novel that reinforces the importance of honesty, transparency, humility, and loyalty.
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