Brassland Books: How to 'Read Aloud'
Hello, Readers!
I've been a writer for over 20 years. And I've read millions of pages, and when I had young boys many of those pages were read aloud. I’ve never met a kid who didn't love being read to.
Reading aloud provides an in-road for kids to experience ideas. Kids want to learn, but sometimes reading a book that might be just above their level might seem too hard. When you read aloud to a child it can hook them, if the story resonates with them, into reading for themselves.
You will know if a child is hooked on a story if:
They get impatient waiting for you to read to them, or
They pick up the book and read for themselves (even if they ask you to read it later, which is fine and likely because they love it when you do)
Reading aloud allows you, as the reader, to inject real human feeling into a book. Written words, even as well written as they could possibly be, can never be as engaging as when spoken by a reader.
The best part of this is that no child will ever criticise your reading… well, at least not compared to reading for themselves!
It is true that children can be brutally honest (and dishonest, they are not angels and they need moral education) so they might compare you to a better reader, however, they will not compare you to the written word. So do not be scared of reading aloud. It might be embarrassing to you, but they don’t think of it like that.
When parents and carers read aloud, we do the difficult work. We convert the text and vocabulary into ideas, which leaves the kids to imagine the story or visualise the information.And after children have been read to, and they pick up a book again or for the first time, they will do so having experienced the best of their imagination, and they will (subconsciously) try to recreate this on their own.
You, dear Reader, don’t have to do anything except read.
..but not too slow
Read fast enough for them to stay hooked, because kids will surprise you with their ability to take in lots of information.
Read slow enough for them to understand the complexities, because kids will surprise you with the depth of understanding they have, and the connections they will draw. But remember, between the two options reading too slow will feel more ‘janky’ to a fast, agile, child’s mind that reading too fast.
“Too fast! Too slow! How do I balance this?”If you were reading a textbook, or the financial pages, this might be difficult. However, if you are reading a well-written story then there will be clues. Maybe you weren’t taught what clues look like when you were a kid, but here’s how to spot them…
Hear the spoken words in your own head. Especially, listen to yourself when you speak for a character.
I could read the line ‘Hello dad, how was your day?’ in many ways.
The worst way to do it is to read word-for-word, aiming for perfect accuracy in replicating the text in a spoken form. Boring!
The best way to do it is to imagine the scene, imagine the character who is talking, and imagine how they speak, and pretend that you are speaking for them.
Context
Directly reading the Context
In the above example, with nothing else to go on, what comes to mind is a family setting (like a living room), where a father is coming home from work (he could look tired), and it greeted by their son (who should be however the writer has described them.)
Context is key in placing yourself in the shoes of a character.
If you have trouble figuring out the context, hopefully the book is well-written and the writer has dropped ‘keywords’ into the surrounding paragraphs to tell you. For example see the highlighted words below:
‘Hello dad, how was your day?’ the boy asked excitedly.
Holding back a yawn the boy asked, ‘Hello dad, how was your day?’
It is interesting that when you read aloud you do NOT need to read-head. In the first example above, if you read the spoken words (‘Hello dad…’) very plainly, but stressed the excitement when you go to that part (‘… said excitedly.’) then the reading will still sound good. Do not feel the need to read-ahead. If the book is well-written, then you will be given the context when it is required.
Inferring the Context
Alternatively, one scene could follow on from a previous scene where the context was strong enough to carry over.
For example, if the son had gotten in trouble in the previous scene, they are most likely to sound down or depressed in greeting their Dad.
Conversely, if they had been told good news in the previous scene, then they are most likely to sound excited and eager to share in this scene.
The last word..
Maybe you think this sounds like a lot, but I refer you to the initial paragraphs above.
As the reader you are doing the heavy-lifting, and kids appreciate this, so they will give you a lot of slack.
The only thing you could do wrong is to stop reading to them too soon!
Happy reading aloud.
.