Goodnight voices everywhere
Submitted by Leslie Constans on Sun, June 28th 2009.
Category: Joyful mothering moment
When my daughter was born, a close friend’s little girl gave us a copy of Goodnight Moon as a present. It was the board-book kind with thick, cardboard pages perfect for gnawing and resistant to a baby’s page-ripping fingers. Inside, the then-eight-year-old friend had inscribed in thick, second-grade handwriting: “We think we’re really going to love you.”
I put the giant book away in the bookshelf, expecting to pull it out again in a year or two. But my sister, a teacher, mentioned one day that it’s never too early to start reading to your child. A book lover for as long as I could remember, I’d never imagined reading aloud to a baby who couldn’t sit unassisted, let alone hold its head up.
One afternoon, I pulled out Goodnight Moon, plopped down on the couch with my two-month-old girl in my lap, opened it up and began to read. To my surprise, she sat rapt and wide-eyed, looking at the big, bright pictures and soothed by the slow cadence of the words and my voice.
So began our love of reading together.
At ages one and two, she put the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other, moving them back and forth to make her own version of the “more” sign. More reading. More books. We started our days at 5:30 or 6 in the morning back then, me half-awake telling stories to the toddler nestled in my lap. After 36 times of reciting the same book, I’d try to sneak a new one in, introducing her to what would become a new favorite that would need to be read another 36 times.
When she was three, she started “reading” books by herself. With eight stuffed animals and dolls placed all around the living room rug and sitting at attention, she’d pull up a chair in front of them, hold the book open like her preschool teacher, smile and begin to read, either making up the story or repeating the words she had heard over and over.
These days, as bedtime looms and my six-year-old daughter gets that last burst of tired, frenetic energy, only the promise of my reading a book will calm her down, even though storytime is a nightly ritual anyways. She’ll jump wildly onto the bed, dive under the covers and suddenly be still.
Chapter books with many words and few pictures or none at all are the choice of reading this year. She still looks at the pages intently, with their black type on white paper, but now stops me to correct a word I mis-read or ask what something means. When I’m finished with a Jack and Annie or Pony Pals adventure, we turn off the light and, heads together on the pillow, speculate in the dark about what tomorrow night’s chapter will bring.
If it’s not too late, she’ll ask to read for a few minutes by herself. Her six-year-old voice transforms into a seasoned storyteller, intoning mystery, suspense, humor, even love, as she reads aloud. She calls out, “Mama!” when stuck on a word she doesn’t know or can’t sound out. After I help her with the word and leave the bedroom again, her voice floats through the quiet old house, soothing the walls and her parents who listen from the next room.
