For Reading Out Loud

A recent radio program spoke about sharing books and asked what were the criteria one used to choose which books to share with others and which to just quietly read, enjoy, savour, and replace on the shelf without comment or recommendation.
I  rarely recommend a book to another and  conversely, if someone recommends a book for me to read I rarely do. 
Having said that, I do believe that the absolutely best way for someone to really share a book with another is by reading it out loud .  My fondest memory of having someone share the written word is when my Dad would get the coloured comics from the newspaper and we would listen to the radio station together as the comics were being read.  Ogo Pogo, The Bumstead's and Lil'Abner were read in animated voices by radio announcers every Sunday morning. If we somehow missed the show then Dad would pitch in and read them to us much to our delight.

BUT, the very, very, very best book sharing that I have ever experienced was when my sister read me stories from Thornton Burgess that were at first printed in the weekly edition of the Western Producer.  The tales of Peter Rabbit, Chatterer the Red Squirrel, Reddy Fox,  Old Man Coyote  and all their friends, describing their antics in the Green Forest with Old Mother West Wind bounded off the page, unto my sister's lips, and  were forever imprinted upon my then four or five year old brain as  we sat in a quiet corner of the house or a shady place on the grass. 

The  Thornton Burgess Bedtime Story books were later collected by myself and my friends with as much frenzy and jealousy as any group of children today have for the possession of action figures, video games, or electronic gadgetry.

  The arrival of Longlegs the Heron and Lighfoot the Deer to the limited library of our rural school house caused a panicky lineup amongst the reading crowd to see who would get to be the first to read these coveted writings.

I tried to pass my love for this series to my school students and later to my own children with limited success.  

 But for myself , whenever I see Jimmy Skunk,  Sammy Jay, Jerry Muskrat's house, or hear Grandfather Frog croaking in the Babbling Brook I recall a warm summer day laying on a blanket while listening to my sister's voice as she read with all the skill that an eight year old could muster to bring the story to life.

 I guess she did a pretty good job of it. 

 

A Library of One's Own

  After much searching, scanning, taping, reading, video taping, downloading, and asking advice , I have finally been able to put a copy of this little story onto this blog.  It also seems to be placed somewhat weirdly on the blog page per se and my apologies for that fact, but to have this even on the page in any form has been the result of a very steep learning curve which as it turns out has not been quite steep enough.

I find it ironic that all the time and effort spent in doing so would have seemed a bit ludicrous to the author of the article, as  the goal of the whole exercise would have been totally beyond what the writer's imagination could have ever envisioned.

This short writing is found in my Grade 7 Reader...Beckoning Trails..and has stuck with me throughout (the exact number which will remain  unmentioned) several years. 

If the print is a bit difficult to read one may perhaps may have to resort to the Zoom on one's screen.

I wonder what Mary Ellen Chase would think of these.

She probably would think , 'Now that's a lot of laundry soap!'