The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids

As someone who knows the joy and value of having been read aloud to as a young person, I have nothing but praise for Sarah Mackenzie and the Read-Aloud Revival. Starting with Jim Trelease and The Read-Aloud Handbook, Sarah further demystifies—and brings up to speed—the deceptively simple act of reading aloud to young people. It is obvious that Sarah has done the homework. Her insights, suggestions, and enthusiasm are contagious—and they work! Brava, Sarah!

Tomie dePaola, children’s book author and artist

The Read-Aloud Family is overflowing with bookish enthusiasm. This book will make you want to sit down and READ—for your own sake, for your kids’ sake, for the sake of all the world.

Anne Bogel, creator of ModernMrsDarcy.com and the What Should I Read Next podcast, and author of Reading People: How Seeing the World Through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything.

In The Read-Aloud Family, Sarah Mackenzie has written a true gem. The vetted lists of good books for each age group is priceless in itself. Equally so, Sarah has provided accessible and powerfully written research on why reading aloud is so important to children and families. Sarah is also a natural storyteller. Humanity and family joy rise up off these pages. I highly recommend this book.

Michael Gurian, bestselling author of Saving Our Sons and The Minds of Girls

Sarah Mackenzie has crafted a treasure of a book that is an answer to every parent’s prayer. Delivered with Sarah’s signature warmth and relatability, The Read-Aloud Family is an accessible guide to the importance of sharing books with those we love. Looking for the true meaning of quality time? Here it is! This practical resource is for anyone who cares deeply about literacy and raising children to become lifelong readers.

Andrea Davis Pinkney, New York Times bestselling and Coretta Scott King Award-winning author of A Poem for Peter: The Story of Ezra Jack Keats and the Creation of The Snowy Day

With this marvelous book, Sarah Mackenzie could change your life. We all want our children to be great readers—it will certainly make all the difference in their lives—and Sarah provides an inspiring blueprint for success. She has done us all a great service with this wonderful book.

Ken Ludwig, playwright and author of How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare

When I need a boost of inspiration on the whys, hows, and whats on reading books with my kids, I turn to Sarah. She’s a trustworthy voice, and with this book, she brings it home to my bookshelf—I’m so glad I now have a way to gather her wisdom whenever I need it. She’s my generation of parents’ go-to reading resource.

Tsh Oxenreider, founder of TheArtofSimple.net and author of At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe

The Read-Aloud Family is both empowering and freeing. Sarah Mackenzie inspires any mother to invest and influence from right where she is with the simple and transforming joy of reading aloud with her children. I can’t wait to see the impact this book has on generations to come.

Ruth Chou Simons, mother of six boys, artist, founder of GraceLaced.com, and bestselling author of GraceLaced: Discovering Timeless Truths Through Seasons of the Heart

As a kid, reading aloud with my family changed my life. I can’t imagine who I would be without it. In this digital age, I’m so grateful to Sarah Mackenzie and her Read-Aloud Revival podcast for motivating thousands of parents to read aloud with their children. Now, in this immensely practical book, she winsomely presents the goals, methods, and principles for reading aloud, while gently waving away common excuses. Her pages also positively overflow with thoughtful recommendations. I expect that my wife and I will be revisiting this book for years to come.

N.D. Wilson, bestselling author of books for kids and adults

What a treasure this book is! The Read-Aloud Family is a practical and powerful guide to shaping your family’s heartbeat through the gift of reading aloud. Sarah’s priceless wisdom will equip and excite you as you deepen your connection with your children page by page. The Read-Aloud Family is a must-read!

Lara Casey, author of Make It Happen and Cultivate

Completely practical and totally inspirational, The Read-Aloud Family will move even the most hesitant to give read-alouds a chance. It will surely serve as a reference when I have my own family!

Jonathan Bean, award-winning author and illustrator

This wonderful book delights, inspires, and clearly articulates such an important philosophy: that every child should grow up swimming in imagination of great tales and stories remembered! Highly recommended for all parents!

Sally Clarkson, blogger, podcaster and author of many bestselling books, including The Lifegiving Home, Different, Educating the WholeHearted Child, and Own Your Life

Three cheers for Sarah Mackenzie! Some of my best memories as a father involve a fireplace, a cozy blanket, and my family hushed by the power of a good story being read aloud. It may sound like a stretch, but I actually believe the world would be a better place if we took the words of Sarah’s book to heart.

Andrew Peterson, singer, songwriter, and author of The Wingfeather Saga

I’ve devoured books since I was a child, but passing that hunger to learn along to my children is less natural than I expected. Then I found Sarah Mackenzie. She equips book lovers to raise our children to be voracious readers and voracious learners—and walks us through how to start, even from as early as when they can fold themselves into our laps. As an avid reader and an author and a mom who has filled the rooms of our house with books: what you have found here is GOLD.

Sara Hagerty, author of Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet and Unseen: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World that Loves to be Noticed

Sarah’s friendly voice extends an invitation to all parents to enjoy sharing stories with our children. No guilt, just inspiration and encouragement. Amid the feast of enthusiasm and abundant resources, Sarah deftly weaves in practical wisdom on how to talk to our kids, not just about books, but about life. I eagerly recommend this book!

S. D. Smith, author of The Green Ember series

The Read-Aloud Family is an absolute gold mine for book lovers, with treasures on each page that will enrich your family for years to come. I’ve already used so many of Sarah’s fresh inspirational tips, and I know I’ll return to this title again and again over the years. It’s my new favorite baby shower gift!

Jamie C. Martin, co-founder of SimpleHomeschool.net and author of Give Your Child the World: Raising Globally Minded Kids One Book at a Time

Jam-packed with lists, tools, strategies and lessons, The Read-Aloud Family is a treasured volume worth dogearing for years to come. Whether your kids are two or twenty-two, let Sarah Mackenzie guide you through the power of the family story—both in the books you read and in the life you lead. A true handbook for togetherness.

Erin Loechner, author of Chasing Slow and blogger at DesignforMankind.com

ALSO BY SARAH MACKENZIE

Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler’s

Guide to Unshakable Peace

ZONDERVAN

The Read-Aloud Family

Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Mackenzie

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mackenzie, Sarah, 1981- author.

Title: The read-aloud family : making meaningful and lasting connections with your kids / Sarah Mackenzie.

Description: Grand Rapids, MI : Zondervan, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017056935 | ISBN 9780310350323 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Oral reading. | Reading--Parent participation. | Education--Parent participation.

Classification: LCC LB1573.5 .M28 2018 | DDC 372.45/2--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056935

ISBN 978-0-310-35137-5 (ebook)

Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with William K. Jensen Literary Agency, 119 Bampton Court, Eugene, Oregon 97404.

Cover design: Curt Diepenhorst

Cover illustration: Daria Kirpach

Interior design: Kait Lamphere

First printing January 2018 / Printed in the United States of America

Information about External Hyperlinks in this eBook

Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

For my children, who taught me to love reading aloud:

Audrey, Allison, Drew, Clara Jane, Emerson, and

Becket. May stories always bind us in love.

And for my brother, who passed on to life eternal

while I wrote this book. You are forever missed and

loved, Nate. Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord,

and let the perpetual light shine upon him.

But the world is a bit short on good fairies these days. So who is to take their place? Who is to make sure that our children’s sense of wonder grows indestructible with the years? We are. You and I.

Katherine Paterson, A Sense of Wonder

CONTENTS

PART 1: The Time Is Now

Chapter 1: How Reading Aloud Can Change the World

(Or, at least, how it’s changing mine)

Chapter 2: Waiting for the Walrus

Being Fully Present

Chapter 3: Roar of the Lion

Inspiring Heroic Virtue

Chapter 4: Ready or Not

Preparing for Academic Success

Chapter 5: Walking a Mile

Nurturing Empathy and Compassion

PART 2: Connecting with Our Kids Through Books

Chapter 6: Create a Book Club Culture at Home

Chapter 7: Debunk Five Myths

Chapter 8: Set Yourself Up for Success

Chapter 9: Become a Literary Matchmaker

Chapter 10: Master the Art of Conversation

Chapter 11: Ask Compelling Questions

PART 3: Meeting Them Where They Are

How to Use Chapters 12–15

Chapter 12: Books Are Delicious, Ages 0–3

Chapter 13: Age of Wonder, Ages 4–7

Chapter 14: The World Expands, Ages 8–12

Chapter 15: Finding My Way, The Teen Years

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index of Books by Title

Index of Books by Author and Illustrator

Index of Books by Age Recommendation

Recommended Resources for Parents

PART 1

The Time Is Now

Chapter 1

HOW READING ALOUD CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

(Or, at least, how it’s changing mine)

No one will ever say, no matter how good a parent he or she was, I think I spent too much time with my children when they were young.

Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise

It was just an ordinary Tuesday, really, but it turned out to be so much more than that.

I was twenty years old; it had been a long, rainy spring; and the 450-square-foot apartment my husband and I shared was feeling even more cramped than usual. I packed up our one-year-old daughter, an overstuffed diaper bag, and a cantaloupe in danger of turning too soft, and headed out the door.

When we arrived at my friend’s house twenty-five minutes later, Christina opened the front door, threw her arm around my neck, and ushered us into her large, cheery home. I breathed a small sigh of relief and dropped the diaper bag by the stairs—another boring afternoon in our tiny apartment had been successfully averted.

Audrey, my daughter, immediately set off, eager to find the toy box. I trailed her, unzipping her coat as she toddled away. Christina’s own toddler, not too keen on me yet, returned my smile with a scowl.

Christina went into the kitchen to dig through the fridge, and I followed her. We had bonded months earlier over birth stories and coffee at a local playgroup, and I was grateful that even though there was at least a decade between my age and Christina’s, we could swap fears and feelings as first-time moms.

Wanna keep an eye on the little ones? she asked. I’ll just whip up a little something for our lunch.

I wandered to the family room, keeping watch as the toddlers ransacked the toy bins. Just as I was about to drop onto the deep leather sofa, I saw it—a book resting precariously on the edge of the fireplace mantle, Post-its jutting out every which way from the pages. I snatched it up and noted the title: The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease.

If this had been happening in a movie, I’m certain there would have been music. In fact, it would have been the tension-building part of the soundtrack. The part that helps the movie-watcher realize that something of great importance is happening, that the rest of the story hinges on this seemingly insignificant moment.

At the time, however, all I heard was the babbling of toddlers and the sizzling of the bratwurst Christina was sautéing for lunch. I flipped through the book, noting how many pages were dog-eared, how many were marked up with penciled comments.

What do you think of this book? I asked Christina over my shoulder.

She turned from the stove and leaned forward, squinting slightly, to see what I was holding, Oh, that one? It’s great!

Turning back to her task, she added, You can borrow it, if you like.

(This is your cue to raise the volume on the soundtrack.)

BEYOND COMPARE

I took Christina’s copy of The Read-Aloud Handbook home, but I didn’t so much read it as inhale it. This alone wasn’t terribly unusual—I read voraciously as a new parent. I had big, idealistic dreams for Audrey and for myself—for the kind of mother I wanted to be. I knew just enough to realize I had no clue how to do this well, so I did what I had always done when I was shooting for an A+: I read.

In those early days of parenting, I rarely made decisions without consulting a book. I read books about what to feed my baby, how to encourage her to nap, what to do for her brain development. The stakes were high, and I was determined to rise to meet them.

One dark evening during her first year, Audrey just would not fall asleep. It had become a recurring problem and, fearful that I was to blame for her poor sleeping habits, I gathered up every parenting book I could find. Spreading them out around me, I sat cross-legged on the apartment floor and searched desperately for a solution to our bedtime struggles. Audrey crawled around me as I sobbed, flipping from one book to the next, wondering why they all gave such conflicting advice and unsure which one to trust. (Fifteen years and five babies later, I wish I could tell my younger self to relax and trust my instincts! Alas, some lessons must be learned through time and experience.)

But even my desire to end the bedtime struggles paled in comparison to the desire I felt to form a meaningful relationship with Audrey. Jim Trelease’s idea that reading with my child could be one of the most important building blocks to a lasting and healthy relationship between the two of us intrigued me. Of all things, I wanted to get this right.

The Read-Aloud Handbook has sold well over a million copies to date, so I think it’s safe to say that I was just one of many whose attention was captured by its message. It presented a new idea for me: the primary goal of reading to children—and of teaching them to read—is not so they can eventually learn to read on their own.

Trelease’s book is chock-full of statistics and data that prove reading aloud connects and bonds families and helps kids grow to be successful in just about every area of life, especially in school. In the book, he asserts that read-alouds are the foundation for the close bonds between parents and kids, between teachers and students.

The 1985 Commission on Reading declared, The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.¹ Trelease unpacks this, then tells about the astonishing power reading aloud has to build a child’s vocabulary, sow the seeds of reading desire, and help kids continue to love books well into their adolescence and beyond.

He proposes read-alouds as the antidote to academic struggle—and not just read-alouds for kids who can’t read yet. Read-alouds for babies in the womb, for newborns who don’t yet hold up their heads, for toddlers and preschoolers and gradeschoolers and even for teens who are quite capable of reading on their own. Trelease advocates reading aloud to kids especially when they can read for themselves. He goes so far as to say that if teachers and parents experience a shortage of time and can’t fit in reading aloud, they should steal [time] from other subjects that are not as essential as reading, which includes pretty much everything else.²

The idea that reading aloud should take priority over other things—that even teachers in schools should shuttle other subjects off the schedule to make more room for it—was new to me. As a child, of course, I loved being read to. My favorite part of elementary school was in the first grade, during the fifteen-minute period after lunch recess when the teacher would read to us from Beverly Cleary’s The Mouse and the Motorcycle. I looked forward to that read-aloud session every single day.

Now, as a brand-new parent, reading board books with Audrey was one of my favorite ways to spend time with her. Of all the tasks and responsibilities associated with parenting, reading was the easiest and most enjoyable. That it could be as profoundly important as Jim Trelease asserted both astonished and delighted me.

That night, I snuggled in next to Audrey and watched her breathe in and out, little puffs of air catching a wisp of her hair as she slept. I turned the pages of The Read-Aloud Handbook, and something deep inside me rumbled.

Then, in that moment, I realized my relationship with this child was the most important thing in my life. Nothing else could compare to the bond between this tiny human being and myself. If reading aloud was going to be the best way to nurture that bond, then by golly, I knew what I was going to do.

NO GUARANTEES

I had high hopes for Audrey right out of the gate. I knew that I wanted her to grow up to love God with all of her heart, mind, and soul. I wanted her to do well in school. I wanted a warm relationship with her, always. I wanted her to be kind and compassionate, to do what was right even when no one was looking.

I also knew that with parenting, there are no guarantees. Kids are not recipes, and just because we prepare them or raise them in a particular way doesn’t mean they’ll turn out how we hope they will. I’ve known plenty of loving, all-in parents whose grown children always seem to be running a gamut of mistakes and missteps. Kids are human, and humanity is messy. I knew right there at the beginning that my own mothering prowess wouldn’t ensure my children would embrace my Christian beliefs, get into good colleges, or make life choices I would be proud of.

Kids are not recipes, and just because we prepare them or raise them in a particular way doesn’t mean they’ll turn out how we hope they will.

In parenting, we aren’t guaranteed any of that, but I still felt keenly the desire and drive to give Audrey my very best. To stack the odds in favor of her becoming the kind, capable, and loving person I hoped she would be.

All the time and effort it would take to raise her would be worth it—not because it guaranteed good results, but because loving and connecting with her would always be worth my time and effort. Because she was mine. Because she was made by God. Because this was the great task I’d been called to.

What I didn’t know, as I stroked her cheek and considered the trajectory my life had taken at such a young age, was that five siblings would join her in the next dozen years. Loving and connecting with my kids would become both the greatest challenge and the most thrilling privilege of my life. Parenting would be so very much harder than I could have possibly imagined in those first years, and so much more rewarding.

I did know this one thing, even back then: there was a lot I could get wrong. And oh, how I desperately wanted to get it right.

MY GREATEST FEAR

The possibility that one day my children will be grown and gone and I might regret the choices I made while raising them terrifies me. We only have a certain amount of time available to us, after all. How we choose to spend that time has significant consequences in that it affects how our children live out the rest of their lives. That’s daunting.

I’m in the thick of things, and if you’re reading this book, I bet you are too. As this book goes to press, my six (yep, six) kids span ages from preschool to high school.

Audrey, that toddling girl who accompanied me, a ripe cantaloupe, and a diaper bag on a visit to Christina’s house so many years ago, is entering her final years at home. I’m acutely aware of how easy it is to slip into the habit of just surviving the day, focusing on getting through. I want to make a meaningful and lasting bond with each of my kids before it’s too late.

As a busy mother, I struggle to truly connect