An Imagination Gone Wild

For the past few weeks, Elina's imagination has completely taken off. I think part of it is her age and the other part is that she and A were constantly telling each other creative stories during A's visit from Taiwan. Elina always wants more stories all the time...the more creative, the better. Unfortunately, I really really stink at telling good, creative, descriptive stories. I don't possess that gene. I'm not a storyteller. I can read a storybook really well and with different facial expressions and different voices, but if you ask me to come up with something off the top of my head, you will start to hear crickets in the background. I'm that bad.

This is where Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook comes in. I bought this book when Elina was a baby because I wanted to find ways to raise a reader. I want Elina to love books as much as I do. Trelease is a firm believer in reading aloud to your children from when they are born until they are adults. His book also has some useful lists of books that are good for reading aloud (because not all great books are great read-aloud books) at different ages. So I looked at Trelease's book to see what I should be reading to her at this point--now that she can read on her own and now that her imagination needs to be fed. Elina still likes regular books, but she always wants more of something....something more creative and "out there" that she could never have imagined on her own. This is the kind of stuff that she really appreciates now.

This is the kind of stuff that only Roald Dahl can provide. For those of you who don't know, Dahl was an amazing children's author. I have read almost all his children's books as a child and then a few more times as an adult. He was a great author because his children's books are about children's things, but when you re-read his books as an adult, you realize how he is also referring to the adult world. One of my fave books is The BFG...and if you haven't read it, you need to. I also love James and the Giant Peach (JGP).

So what's the connection between Trelease's book and Roald Dahl? Well, Trelease said that he believes that kindergartners are never too young for short chapter books and high school students are never too old for picture books. He actually starts his kids off with JGP as their first read-aloud chapter books. He would read one chapter a day and he said that they were always dying for the book the next day to find out what happens.

I was kind of doubtful as I flipped through my copy of JGP because there were almost no pictures. How would Elina possibly sit through 39 chapters of this? That's a lot of days. But the chapters were short and I had faith in Dahl, so I started to read JGP to her a few nights ago.

Man, does Dahl understand children or what?? When he was interviewed about writing children's books as opposed to his short stories for adults, this is what he said, "Children's books are harder to write. It's tougher to keep a child interested because the child doesn't have the concentration of an adult. The child knows the television is in the next room. It's tough to hold a child, but it's a lovely thing to try to do." We are on Chapter 8 right now and every night she is dying for me to keep reading. I have to admit that we've already cheated the last 2 nights because I read 2 chapters last night and 2 the night before. It's just because when the chapters end abruptly, her mouth is wide open and her eyes are bugging out of her head and she just can't wait! She says, "I think I need you to read me another chapter." It's so sweet that I can't say no.

When I read Dahl's paragraphs, Elina is always feeling something. She's on the edge of her seat. She grabs my arm. Her mouth drops. She gasps. She laughs hard. She laughs harder. She just can't believe the things that are in this book. She is literally eating up all the juicy details. It's wonderful to watch her reaction while I'm reading. She doesn't care that there are no pictures. She just wants me to read more and more. It's awesome.

Granted, I DO have to make some edits. I take out certain words because they aren't appropriate for her right now or I change the wording because there are too many hard words all together. But all in all, it's been fun reading this book for the past few nights. And Elina is in heaven. She can repeat a lot of the story verbatim, even though I've only read through the chapters once. She just holds onto all the details in her head and she can't let them go. That is why Dahl's writing is so amazing for even the youngest kids.

I just had to write a post about this because I can't believe my child is in love with one of the books that I've always been in love with. It's so great to be able to share this with her. I love it! So thank you, Jim Trelease for advising me to start Elina on chapter books. And thank you, Roald Dahl for giving Elina the creativity she's been craving.