Book Love: The Read-Aloud Family

It's been a hot second since I've done a post solely dedicated to one book!  The last was shortly after Sam was born, for a book I finished right before we got him.  It's a minor miracle that that post even got written even though I still think about that book and am 90% sure it'll end up on my "Best Reads of 2018" list.

It's not that I haven't been reading since becoming a parent to two boys, it's just that I haven't had much time to write about what I've been reading.  Or maybe I just haven't been WOWED by anything in a long time.  I do hope to write more about my reading now that I have a little more time to devote to writing.  Talking about books is one of my favorite topics so writing about them should happen more.

This book, The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids by Sarah MacKenzie was fantastic.  It's all about how beneficial it is to read to your kids.

My first thought, when hearing about the book initially, was "I already love reading to Luke and we do it pretty often.  I don't need a book to tell me to read to him."  We hit 1,000 different books shortly after he turned 5 (1,000 Books Before Kindergarten) and had read many books many times.  We read together a lot.

I was wrong.  Not about reading to Luke but wrong in thinking this book wouldn't be useful to me (I'm so humble in my own head...).  It fully reiterated how important it is to read to our kids.  ESPECIALLY when they can read themselves but at all times.  Sarah gives stats and research to back up all her thoughts and I was even more fully convinced that reading to Luke is important.  Has been important.  Will continue to be important for many years.

She has hints and tips for fitting into already busy days.  Ideas of things activities for kids to do while they listen to books and grace that you don't need to read to your kids every single day for it to matter.

There are also book lists.  Book lists sorted by age, all the way up to high schoolers.  I put a lot of the picture books on our "to get next" list on the library app.  Added some of her recommended middle-grade novels to my own TBR.  I was nodding along half the time and wanted to be highlighting the book the other half.

There are a lot of benefits to reading aloud and building a bond with them isn't the only one but may be one of the most important.  Sure, helping them with language and learning how a story flows and reading comprehension are certainly benefits.  Of course they are.  But having this shared interest and knowledge of books you've read together is so important too.

My family used to listen to audio books together on long car trips (we all remember my Dad banning How to Eat Fried Worms before we were done listening to it).  My Mom read us books in the car on some car trips.  She'd read aloud to us right after lunch/recess during our home school days.  And I'm sure she read us plenty of picture books but most of those happened before I remember them.  But there are still plenty of books at my parents' house that I have happy memories of reading and I'm sure Mom read them to me before I could read them myself.

This book is about family bonding through reading and all the other benefits that come along with it.  Even if you are already an avid read-alouder to your kids, I'd still recommend this.  It makes me want to keep reading to Luke until he moves out of the house and inspired me to read aloud to just Sam while Luke is at school.  I hope I've already created a book culture in our house but this makes me want to keep it up even more.

Goodreads | Amazon

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