That sounds pretty obvious, but I remember a workshop I attended over 20 years ago on "Language Acquisition" that made me aware that the best way to improve the reading skills of the less adept 17-year-olds in my classroom would be for someone to have read to them when they were little. (It made me fantasize about a sabbatical during which I hung out at laundromats and read stories to children between infancy and 3 years.)
If kids don't hear the written word spoken (as in reading books to them), they don't grow up with "sentence sense." They may have magnificent vocabularies from a highly verbal environment, but reading and writing will be more of a challenge for them than for their read-to classmates. Fourth grade is often when the gulf between the two groups becomes obvious.
Once we commit to regular reading, there's the next question: what books are best? Children's picture books can be like poetry in their condensed clarity and precise choice of words, and there are plenty of really wonderful ones out there. But in the end, don't worry too much about "quality" -- I had a professor who said (about adults, but it works for kids, too) that "Readers of trash have taste that can be improved; non-readers have no taste." It's a pretty harsh-sounding statement, but I find it also a really generous one. The basic message is: just read.
Meanwhile, in connection with "what to read," I want to share a story about one of my kids' favorites. I was standing in line at the library to check out The Little Engine that Could, one of the classics, for my two little boys, when the woman behind me said, "You shouldn't be reading that to your kids. It's sexist."
"But it's got a female protagonist," I responded. "The little engine is a girl! I thought it would be good for my boys to know that girls can be strong, too."
"Yeah," the other mom responded, "but look at how the men are represented. First, what's the broken-down train carrying?"
"Food and toys for the children on the other side of the mountain."
"Right," she went on, "women's work. And when the big male engines are asked to help, they say they're too busy, too tired, or too important to bother. What an image to give kids about adult males, that children aren't worth helping! It's got to be a female engine that cares enough to do the job."
I checked the book out anyway, that day and many times after. But off and on I would hear that strident voice telling me it was a bad choice.
Fast forward 20 years. In my 11th grade American Literature classroom, on the last day before Christmas vacation, I often asked students to bring in their favorite story books from childhood and we'd read them aloud. I explained that we were honoring their "language acquisition" as children, but it was also fun. About a third to a half of the students would bring in a favorite. One year we still had time left when we'd finished all their books, so I asked them how many remembered The Little Engine that Could. Although no one had brought it in, most of them knew it. So I asked: "What color is the engine?"
"Red!" was the universal response.
"What gender is the engine?"
"Male!" they all said.
"Wrong on both counts," I said; "she is blue," and I told them the story of the irate mom. They just shook their heads.
That experience relieved any left-over guilt about reading that beloved book over and over to my own children. My students remembered the story line, the courage and persistence and determination of the little engine who not only thought she could, but actually made it over the mountain -- they weren't caught up in the gender or even the color. It was ok.
So again the message is: just read. Read lots, read often, and trust that the variety of books you choose will offer an enormous range of ideas and images. And if you still worry about The Little Engine that Could, balance it with the tender image of fatherhood in Horton Hatches the Egg.
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