If reading is meant to make you fall asleep, then I’m doing something wrong. At our home, a session with our almost adult first grader invariably ends in a romp or conversation with very difficult questions about time travel, Higgs particles and other dimensions.
Thanks to the figures from the Reading Foundation, I know that we belong to a minority. There is no need to scream bloody murder: 95 percent of parents with a child between 0 and 6 years old read at least weekly. Nice to let them go, you might say.
However, two things may be different. Firstly: as soon as children can read themselves, parents give up en masse. Only 17 percent of parents read aloud to children in secondary school. Second, fathers should be allowed to do it a little more. Another study by book promoters shows that children are most often and preferably read to by their mothers.
Let’s both business during the National Reading Days, from January 26 through February 5, forever. Because, and many mothers will also like to know that: reading aloud doesn’t just have to be about sleeping bunnies. The organization shows that this year with its choice for the tough But first I caught a monster by Tjibbe Veldkamp and Kees de Boer (Lemniscaat; € 14.99; 4+) as picture book of the year.
The story is about a boy who makes up all kinds of things to be read aloud for a long time. No, he’s not going to sleep at all, because he’s caught a monster. And a few more. And then she him. Because the narrator finds that a disappointing ending, the story starts again; you can go on with it endlessly. In the wild illustrations it is meanwhile becoming a bigger and bigger mess.
Veldkamp and De Boer have been working together for twenty years and have created an extensive oeuvre of non-tender picture books. The endlessly witty series cop and crook is the undeniable highlight, but there is much more and it is all equally successful. Not only because of the humorous texts, but also because of the physical, cinematic illustrations; nothing in these books stands still. These two can easily make a picture book of the year every year.
It can be even wilder. The translation of the Swedish comedian David Sundin appeared this winter The book that doesn’t want to be read (Van Goor; € 12.99; 6+), a great success in our own country. It deserves it here too. Please note: it helps if the child who is read to can also do this a little himself, because this book makes fun of everything that has to do with letters.
Not only does the reader have to work his way through texts in which sounds have been exchanged, so that funny nonsense words arise, and in which words spin around, get bigger or smaller. The book also wants to be used as a steering wheel and to fly around the room like a bird, the reader is ordered to sing a song, the book catches fire and has to be blown out again.
If these picture books prove anything, it’s that reading aloud doesn’t have to be a chore for the little ones. On the contrary, once you get the hang of it, try to stop. That’s how we read Under the spell of the ring by JRR Tolkien integral. Eight months of work. You never forget something like that. Just like our discussions of the incredibly vast universe using The mystery of nothing and endless snot, by physics fans Jan Paul Schutten and Floor Rieder. Soon, who knows, Kafka. The secret of reading aloud lies not in starting, but in continuing.