Open Your Eyes
Roz Abisch ~ Boche Kaplan
Parents' Magazine Press, 1964
I love that my son --at almost six-- still loves me to read him anything... from Percy Jackson to a toddler book about colors. As long as the pictures are good and/or the story is well-written, he will turn no book away. I can't tell you how many play dates we've had when a child finds a book in our house and I start to read and then they realize how long it is (as in a picture book with more than 36 words) and they ask me to stop and just go through and show them the pictures. With the exception of some children who just have a natural aversion to sitting for extended periods of time, if you read to a child daily, they will want to be read to. Period.
That said, here we have a nice combination of color, story and beginning reader awesome. (I know I overuse the word awesome on this blog, but really, what's more awesome than kids' books?) Simple lines, words and concepts make this a great first read-aloud.
One rainy day Tim Small saidTo his little brother, Ed,
"We can't go out to play.
Let's play indoors instead."
"What can we play?" Ed asked him.
"Let's play RED," answered Tim.
"What is RED?" asked Ed.
"That's the game! Just what you said.
It's all the things we know are RED."
In my son's kindergarten class, his teacher always asks them to study the pictures if they need clues to figuring out what the words are, and here the pictures are the words, so it's a nice tie-back.
Simply put, read, read and read some more to your children. Stuff every empty corner in your house with a book or two. Like the cover says, OPEN YOUR EYES. Make every space, every day, every moment... a readertunity.
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i find it amazing that people don't read to their children. i agree that it makes all the difference. and i also agree that it really shows up in school...the kids who are read to and the kids who are not. xoxo
ReplyDeleteI've loved this book ever since kindergarten! I could always see the little boy with round glasses-whenever someone said, Open your eyes". Good memories-♥
ReplyDeleteReadertunity. I'm tucking that gem in my pocket. You (and the book) are scream-a-rific.
ReplyDeleteI remember my young childhood being slow and quiet... I watched shows like Mr. Rogers and was read to often. The world is just so fast paced and ADD nowadays.
ReplyDeleteSuper duper post as usual.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. Great blog!
Read Aloud Dad
I enjoy packing our house with books, books and more books. But I do wonder, do you let your son have free access to the vintage books? So far, I'm putting the oldest books on the top shelf.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fantastic post!!! This is one of my favorite books ever! I still have my copy - well my mother has it right this minute because she volunteers at a local daycare and reads to the preschoolers once a week :) But she's the one who bought it for me when I was a preschooler, so that's OK I guess ;-) I love this book so much. She had her own preschool and let most of her books go when she retired after 40 years, but the ones that were originally mine, I got to keep - including my original One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Where the Wild Things Are, and of course this gem. I still love to read and some weeks I finish a book a day :-O
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, our mother had a rocking chair in our bedroom (back in the bad old days when *gasp* children had to share bedrooms) and she read to my sister and I every single night.