Read-Aloud Classics

 

            Today's Snack: Cut up a cucumber into diced pieces, and eat them with your mouth open, making all the noise you possibly can. Then drink a glass of fruit juice while slurping and gulping as loud as you can. Of course, you know better than that . . . but it's fun to be a manners offender once in a while.

 

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It's hard to scrounge around to find all the great books that you want your child to know. It also can get darned expensive. Fortunately, there are several good compendiums that have done the leg work for you.

 

            One that's available inexpensively is "Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children" (William F. Russell, Ed.D., Three Rivers Press, New York, 1984).

 

The 312-page book divides stories, poems and holiday favorites for children in approximate age groups, or "listening levels," from age 5 and up.

 

With 32 full selections or long excerpts, this book will provide weeks of bedtime reading fun for both parent and child.

 

            Examples: "Androcles and the Lion" from Aesop's Fables; "Jim Baker's Bluejay Yarn" by Mark Twain; "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, and "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry.

 

            Russell lauds classic literature for its complete sentences and precise vocabulary, in stark contrast to many dumbed-down, social-evil focused contemporary books assigned in schools, or the junk-talk that's so prevalent on TV.

 

            Don't worry that the stories are too difficult for young children: Russell points out that the average first-grader's reading primer may be built on a vocabulary of just 350 words, while that same first-grader has a "listening vocabulary" of close to 10,000 words.

 

The more "big" words a youngster hears, the easier it is to add those new big words to his or her reading vocabulary. And that's how good readers are made.