Children's Books discussion

Hi All! I'm working on a project about the benefits of reading to children. i decided to begin it with a page of memories about being read to. If you have any fond memories of being read to between the ages of 7 and 13 and would be comfortable with me sharing them annonmously in my school project leave a comment! Thanks :)

Emily, You want us to post here or pm you?

Well, I wasn't read to at home at that age but my fourth and fifth grade teachers read to my classes.

My fondest memory from that age range of being read to is my fifth grade teacher (we all loved him) used to often read to us between lunch and afternoon recess. One day, he did that, then when we came back from recess he continued to read to us until closing bell at 3:10. So, he read to us the whole afternoon. That was like heaven for me and all my classmates, even the ones who weren't fond of reading enjoyed that afternoon. I was ten and everyone in my class was ten or eleven.

I agree with Emily, I wasn't read to much at home but now love reading to my son.
My fondest memory is of reading in a bathtub at school. One of my teachers had this wonderful four leg bathtubs in her class with lots of comfy pillows inside and when we earned enough points we could chose out a book and read in it. I also remember going to the kindergarten to read to the younger children and really liked that. I am glad they continue it even now.

I was read to a lot when I was younger than 7, but by that age, I was doing most of my own reading. The one exception was on Saturdays. When I was young, most African American girls straightened their hair if it was naturally kinky (as mine is - see photo!) Back then, this was an arduous process, involving much detangling and pressing with a hot comb heated on the kitchen stove. Words cannot describe how much I hated this. I used to hide under the table and refuse to come out. My father knew that the one thing that I couldn't run away from was a good book. So Daddy would read to me the whole time that my mother was performing her hair ritual so that I could be "presentable" at church the next day. I loved hearing Daddy's voice reading to me, but I still hated the hair nonsense, and when I was old enough to make my own decisions, I cut my hair, wore it natural, and it's looked pretty much the same ever since (except, of course, now it's a bit grayer, befitting a Grandma!)

Love hearing all of your memories!! Thank you so much! I'm just taking parts of them to share in a school project, not using names or anything, but they are all great stories

I don't have any specific stories to share, but both of my parents read to me on a daily basis up to age 5 (after that I had siblings so they were too busy). My mother read to me more often, but it is an especially positive memory of my father, who didn't often take time to entertain us kids.

I don't remember being read to at bedtime, but my mother read to us all the time. The most memorable instances were on vacations. My family took long car trips every summer and for each trip my mother would choose a different series and read it aloud in the car as we drove. We read Little House that way, the All-of-a-Kind Family, The Dark is Rising Sequence, The Boxcar Children, a bunch of the old Uncle Wiggly books (the long ones with many, many stories), and a bunch of others. My dad would be as into it as my brother and I were and often just as upset as we were when Mom had to take a break!

My grandmother was a children's librarian and brought us books and read to us a lot too. We were very read-to kids! She did have a tendency to bring the same books over and over, though (she still does that, actually - my brother has eight identical copies of Captain's Courageous).

I also remember my grandfather reading me the entire Winnie the Pooh series (poetry books and all). He had them mostly memorized, actually. I still "hear" those books in his voice when I read them and he died when I was seven. I have the beautiful leather bound copies of the books he gave me to this day.

What wonderful memories, Katie!

Katie, did you like the "Uncle Wiggly" stories? I am considering, but they seem kind of weird.

Ever since ds accidentally walked in on the movie "Donnie Darko" he has not been fond of large rabbits. (The movie has a large rabbit.)

I had an Uncle Wiggly board game as a kid. I didn't know it was based on a book!

On summer evenings Dad would read from Kipling's Just So Stories to us 5 kids, while we sat outdoors on the lawn. We especially adored the Elephant's Child because he could sound so funny when the crocodile had the Child by his short stubby nose! Each of my children now own a copy of that book to share with our grandchildren!

When I was just starting second grade at not quite seven years of age, I got very sick with rheumatic fever. During the six months of bedrest prescribed, my mother read a lot of books to me. (We had no TV.) A friend of the family gave me a newly published children's book, and I started to read it on my own, but my mother finished it aloud. She read it again each year after that in her fourth grade classroom. The book was Charlotte's Web -- obviously a favorite in our family.

Oh Sheila, I absolutely love Charlotte's Web, and what a great story. I love the books I found as a child when they were brand new. They include The Phantom Tollbooth and A Wrinkle in Time, but I don't have such interesting stories about them.

Uncle Wiggly was a whole series of books of short stories. My brother and I loved them when we were kids. We had a bunch of books of his stories, too, because we got any new books about him we found (which was rare) as well as a whole bunch of old books about him. My grandmother and my mother both liked antique stores and used bookstore and any time one of them found an Uncle Wiggly book, they bought it for us. We had my grandmother's childhood Uncle Wiggly book as well, which was totally falling apart from being read so much!

They are such fun, silly stories. My little brother and I used to come up with our own stories about him, actually. I even dressed up as Uncle Wiggly for Halloween once (my mother made me a costume for it, complete with a barber-pole striped crutch). Our favorite parts were always the wacky sentences at the end of the stories though. They were always something like "And if the broom handle doesn't decide to run away with the mop and knock over the milk bottle so that the mailman slips and falls in the pool of milk, I'll tell you the tale of Uncle Wiggly and the Squirrels tomorrow" (that's totally made up, since I don't have one of the books in front of me, but you get the idea).

Okay, thanks!

I don't know if you still need stories for your project, but I'm going to share anyway. I was a very early reader (they put me in with third graders for reading time when I was in first grade-which I hated btw) so I don't have memories of my mom reading to me. But my grandma read to me even though I could already read myself. One specific memory is when I was 11 years old (we were living in Germany at the time) and my Grandma from California came to visit us. She brought a copy of "Anne of Green Gables" and read it to me-the whole thing. I sat next to her and read along. She would explain a thing or two here and there, but mainly she just read, using her animated teacher's voice. She got me hooked on L.M. Montgomery and made Anne come to life for me. I even have a photo of her reading that book to me. It will always be a treasured memory for me. There were three other books I remember my Grandma reading to me over and over again. Luckily I've managed to find copies of the two I really liked. One was "Mop Top" by Don Freeman and one was "Caroline in Europe." 'Caroline' is a charming book about a girl and her pets who travel throughout Europe and get into all sorts of scrapes. 'Mop Top' is about a boy who doesn't want to get his hair cut. Both of the books bring back the warm fuzzies of childhood and the memories of my grandma reading them to me.

Dorothea, your wonderful story about your grandmother reading to you is so heart warming. It is a beautiful reminder to all of us how important it is to read to our children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, students; in fact all children.