RAR #172: Helping Our Developing Readers Fall in Love with Books

Sarah (00:00): Not all of our kids become voracious readers on their own. In fact, if your child is a developing reader who hasn't yet gained fluency, reading is likely far down the list of things he or she would like to do with their time. It's really good to remember that early days of learning to read are difficult. Reading still isn't easy or enjoyable for a child who has to sound out every third or fourth word, so it's no wonder they don't love it. In today's episode, we're going to talk about strategies to help hook your developing reader, and I'll give you some book suggestions that they might just find too good to pass up. This and more in today's episode of the Read-Aloud Revival. (00:50): You're listening to the Read-Aloud Revival Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Mackenzie, homeschooling mom of six and author of the Read-Aloud Family and Teaching From Rest. As parents, we're overwhelmed with a lot to do. It feels like every child needs something different. The good news is you are the best person to help your kids learn and grow, and home is the best place to fall in love with books. This podcast has been downloaded seven million times in over 160 countries. So, if you want to nurture warm relationships while also raising kids who love to read, you're in good company. We'll help your kids fall in love with books and will help you fall in love with homeschooling. Let's get started. (01:41): Hello, Sarah Mackenzie here. Hey, the great homeschool conventions are right around the corner. Those are happening in person this year in 2021. You can find out details about where and when each of those conventions are happening at greathomeschoolconventions.com. I'm speaking at all of them. I'm going to do a session on raising kids who love to read, another session on Teaching From Rest: A Homeschooler's Guide to Unshakeable Peace, as well as a Q&A panel and a special event real mom tour with a couple of my favorites, Pam Barnhill from Your Morning Basket and Colleen Kessler from Raising Lifelong Learners. You can get details on all of it at greathomeschoolconventions.com. Those start up next month in March, 2021, and then they run in various locations through the summer. (02:33): Now, before we jump into how to support our developing readers and help them become voracious readers, a topic I'm very much looking forward to chatting with you about today, I'm going to answer a couple of the great questions you sent in. Kristie (caller 1) (02:45): Hi, Sarah. My name is Kristie, and I have three children. My older two are five and seven, and both love to listen to audio books. I know you talk a lot about the benefits of audio books and your kids listen to them as well. My question is when, how and why do you transition from audio books to independent reading at rest time? Currently, both of my children listen to audio books in the afternoon while my two-year-old naps. My seven-year-old is a capable independent reader, but still much prefers to listen to an audio book. What is slightly concerning to me is that I'll sometimes find him in his room with his audio book playing while he's also reading a different book. He tells me that he can do both at once. Have any of your kids done this? If so, how have you handled it, or how have you encouraged them to read independently instead of listening during rest time? Thanks so much, Sarah. Sarah (03:37): Yeah, thanks for that question, Kristie. I see these as two different modes of the same thing, the audio book is reading with the ear and the independent reading is reading with the eye. So, it's helpful for me to remind myself that one's not really better than the other. They're both worthwhile, they're both equally reading, and they both actually probably need some practice to develop fluency and speed. Because if you've tried to listen to an audio book yourself, you'll notice that until you get in the habit of it, it's a little bit hard to focus on it. Our ability to pay attention has to be cultivated a little bit. And of course, the same thing we know with reading with our eyes, that it's easier to do once you do it more often. (04:18): Okay, so that said, I don't tell my kids that they have to read independently during rest time. I do let them listen to audio books if they prefer to do that during rest time, mostly because I don't want to send the message that reading with eyes is better than reading with ears. But one thing I was thinking about, because both of those things are worthwhile and they both do need time and attention to develop fluency and to get comfortable with them, I wonder if you could split them into different times. You said it's during your toddler's nap. I wonder if the rest time is, let's say an hour, if half an hour you can tell your son, "For half an hour you're going to do the audio book, and for half an hour you can read with your eyes." Or even splitting it up and saying, "That nap time rest time is for reading with your eyes. And then, before bed, you can have another half an hour to listen to your audio book." Or the other way around, audio book during the day, reading with eyes at night. It doesn't really matter when that happens. (05:16): Because I do think it's worthwhile to value both and to allow the enjoyment of both and time for the enjoyment of both. As for your son listening to an audio book and reading a different book at the same time, that's impressive honestly. I'm not sure it's a habit you want to cultivate, because part of the beauty of reading is it means we can't multitask what we're thinking about, it slows our brain down. You can multitask and listen to an audio book and do something else. You could listen to an audio book and go for a walk or wash the dishes or play with your Legos, but probably you can't think about something else and still maintain that understanding of the narrative happening in the audio book. (05:59): So, I'm trying to think of why he might be wanting to do that. I wonder if he's maybe wanting to make progress on getting through a certain number of books or keeping a list of books, keeping track of how many he's read or how many pages he's read or something, and he feels like he'll get those faster that way. In which case, and I don't know if this is the case, but if you think that might be the case, I think I'd tell him he can just do one at a time, you can only read with your ears or your eyes at one time, and then see what you can do to double the amount of time he has set aside for reading so that he feels like he can make as much progress as he wants. That might not be why he's doing it, but if it's because he wants to make that list longer of his completed books or the number of pages he's read, then I wonder if just offering a solution where he can chalk up more pages read or books read without trying to do them all at once would work. Thank you so much for your question, Kristie. I hope that helps a little. Ann (caller 2) (06:57): Hi, Sarah. My name is Ann Nelson. I was listening to your most recent episode about reading wordless books, and it got me thinking about a question I have regarding reading Shakespeare. You mentioned how the obstacle for some children who find reading words on a page difficult could discourage them from reading and therefore a wordless book could be a good entry point. It makes me wonder the same thing about Shakespeare. I'm wondering why people, teachers want to teach kids to read Shakespeare. I took Shakespeare in high school, I enjoyed it, but I could see where it'd be a challenge to most people because you almost need a parallel translation as you read it in order to understand what you're reading anyways. So, I love the Ken Ludwig book, I've read it, How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. And I love memorizing passages of Shakespeare with my children and talking through the meaning of them, but after that I felt more inclined to just want to watch a DVD version or various play versions, since it was written as a play and not really written to be read anyways. So, I was just curious if you feel that you can think of advantages to actually reading through a play rather than just watching it and discussing it? Sarah (08:21): Oh, I so agree, Ann. I think Ken Ludwick himself, the author of How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, I think he would agree as well that Shakespeare wrote his plays to be enjoyed as plays, to be visually enjoyed. When you're writing a play or writing a screenplay, the writer is actually thinking constantly about how that story is going to be very visual, it's going to be told visually. So, I think that's worth considering here. I'm inclined to agree with you, memorizing passages and watching the plays is actually the very best way to "read Shakespeare" and then reading the words or the plays with our eyes is a subpar activity comparative to watching them. (09:11): In fact, I was just thinking about this because when I read Twelfth Night a couple of years ago, we read it as part of our mama book club in Aria Premium, and a lot of us found that reading the play with our eyes was really greatly enhanced by listening to an audio drama of Twelfth Night, listening to the play on audio. It really made the play come to life and actually helped me understand a lot of the language I wouldn't have understood if I was just reading with my eyes. Because of course, you've got these professional actors who are bringing those words to life and they make so much more sense. So, I guess my answer is I wouldn't feel compelled to read them the plays with our eyes at all. I have a hunch that the reason so many people talk about reading the plays, and this is happening in curriculum in schools, is just because we haven't actually stopped to think about the fact that a Shakespeare play is actually best watched and not read with the eyes. (10:04): So, if you are into memorizing passages and watching plays with your kids and some of those audio versions of the Shakespeare plays are so fantastic, I think those are excellent ways to "read Shakespeare" with your kids. Now, for all of you, listeners, if you're listening to this and thinking, "Hey, where do I find out more about introducing my kids to Shakespeare?" That's the previous episode, episode 171. The world renowned and award-winning playwright, Ken Ludwig, joined me for that episode. We got into a very simple, delightful way to introduce kids of any age to Shakespeare, and you got a little hint of it here, which is memorizing passages and really just falling in love with the stories. (10:46): So, great questions today. Thank you, Kristie. Thank you, Ann. If you have a question you'd like me to tackle on a future episode of the podcast, you can leave that question at readaloudrevival.com. So, you go to readaloudrevival.com, scroll down a bit, you'll see a button that says, "Got a question for Sarah Mackenzie" and you record a little voice message for me there. I'd love to hear from you. (11:27): Okay, so let's talk about developing readers, readers who haven't yet gained fluency and ease in their reading, where reading is still hard work, whether they're sounding out a lot of words or just they are needing somebody next to them while they're reading so they can get through that sticky word, each sentence, or whatever that they're struggling with. Or just reading is hard work, they might not even need your help so much sounding out the words, but it takes a lot of their mental energy and stamina to do the reading. I think it's worth taking some time to talk about this, because as much as we all want our kids to love reading, and I'm pretty sure you do if you're listening today, we should know that that's an unrealistic expectation for a child for whom reading is hard. (12:12): It's human for us, we don't really like to do things that are hard. When we have to do hard things day over day for a sustained amount of time, it's not exactly a recipe for helping us fall in love with whatever that task is. An image I find useful here is to consider when we're asking our developing reader to read with their eyes, we're essentially asking them to climb a mountain. We can do that, it's worthwhile, it's an important thing for them to do, they need to practice. We can encourage them and give them the time and space to practice and the tools, but it's still hard work. So, when they get to the top of that mountain or the end of the book as it were, they might not exactly be eager to climb another mountain right away. It's just worth it to know that asking our developing readers to fall in love with reading while they're still developing is tricky. It's just not likely to happen on its own. But I think there are a few things we can do. (13:08): Number one, we can help our developing readers fall in love with stories. Number two, we can help them practice their skills so that they develop speed and ease and fluency in their reading, and that way they get to that stage of falling in love with reading sooner. And then, number three, we can help them find books that make reading irresistible. So, today we're just going to walk through those three things that we can do to help our developing readers. Let's talk first about the importance of falling in love with the stories themselves. It's worth thinking about here, because I think it's a rare person who actually falls in love with the act of reading. And by that I mean the act of decoding the letters and symbols on the page and knowing the words they represent. Do you get a thrill on a regular basis from being able to read the word "the," and know when you see the symbols that look like a T and an H and an E, they say "the?" No, we fall in love with the stories, the words, the descriptions, the information, and the way it's presented. (14:13): So, the best way to help our kids fall in love with the stories, which is really what we want most, if our kids love stories then they will have an incentive and a motivator to want to read because then they can get the stories for themselves without having to wait on anybody else or having the access to an audio book or someone to read to them. So, we really want to help our kids fall in love with stories and the best way to do that is, I feel like I need a trumpet here, to read aloud, because you already know this. (14:44): We really want to give our kids an expectation that books and stories are amazing. So, if all of our beginning readers the kinds of books that are fun to read or fine to read, I've been reading A Great Day For Up with a couple of my emerging readers and it's just not super inspiring. They like it, it's a funny, it's cute as far as an early reader goes, but it's not exactly motivating in the place where they go, "Oh, I really want to get more of those stories for myself." That's a very different experience than if I was to read to them The Green Ember or The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe or Paddington Bear. They get a different sense of, "Oh, I want more of that," when you read a really good story. (15:35): So, the first thing we want to keep in mind is just that we should read aloud as much as we can. And indeed, actually we need to be spending far more time reading aloud than we should be doing phonics and practicing instructive reading with our kids. So, your child should be hearing more read alouds. They should spend more time listening to read alouds, either you or an audio book than they do reading with their eyes as they're developing their own reading chops. That's a really important thing to keep in mind. The phonics instruction, the reading instruction is important, we're going to talk about that in a second, but they really need to spend a lot more time listening to good language, listening to beautiful stories than they do practicing the act of reading. (16:20): Let's actually talk about that now, because if we help them fall in love with stories, and then we also offer them practice and instruction so they can develop reading speed and ease, so it becomes easy for them, that is a recipe for helping our kids want to read. If they can read easily, they will want to read more often than if reading is a chore. Now, this episode isn't really an episode on the nuts and bolts of how to teach a child how to read, but I know a lot of you have questions about resources I like for teaching kids how to read, the phonics and reading instruction. So, I'll just mention quickly here the programs I like best are all about reading and logic of English. We'll put links to both of those in the show notes. The show notes, by the way, are at readaloudrevival.com/172, and both all about reading and logic of English are based on the same methodology. It's called Orton-Gillingham methodology. They're both excellent. You don't need both, you just need one or the other. I've used and liked both. (17:23): The key here I think is to keep your lessons short and frequent. Short, daily phonics lessons will help your child learn to read much better than a lesson twice a week that lasts longer. So, when I do a phonics lesson with my own kids, I only do about 10 or 15 minutes. That's it. I actually set a timer on my phone so that I remember to stop after 10 or 15 minutes. Even if they're still doing fine, I still cut it short and then we move on to something else because I think that short dailiness is really the operative words here. 10 or 15 minutes a day is very likely enough, as long as it's done consistently and you're using something solid and you're getting to it frequently and those lessons they cumulate, it's not like a snowball in their mind. The more often that you roll that snowball down the hill, it gets bigger and bigger until reading becomes easy. (18:14): Now, as part of your phonics, whatever program you're using, you probably are going to be using early readers as part of that instruction where they'll practice reading stories, and I do have a list of favorite early readers. We'll link to that list in the show notes. They were the focus of episode 105, so you can just go back and listen to that episode if you'd like. We are just about to update that list, so keep an eye on your email inbox, because I'm going to send you a note when that list of favorite early readers has been updated. And by early readers, I mean these books that our kids can sound out as they're learning to read. I mentioned A Great Day For Up, that's one. Any readers that come with your phonics program, any readers like Frog and Toad or Little Bear, or The Cat Sat On a Hat stories, Bob Books, those are all early readers. They help our kids with their phonics practice. They're not particularly amazing stories, but they do help them get skill, speed, fluency, ease in their reading and that's really important. (19:18): So, we have a few more gems to add to that early readers list, so keep an eye out for that. Now, if you're not getting my emails, go to readaloudrevival.com/subscribe. I don't know if I'll remember to tell you on the next podcast episode that the early readers list is updated. So, just pop your email in on readaloudrevival.com/subscribe so you won't miss it. If you get emails from me, you will get that note when it's ready. And that list will be a list of really good early readers for your kids who are just learning how to read. And like I said, we're just about to update it because I've got a few more favorites to add to it. (19:56): Okay. So, we're reading aloud. We're helping our kids fall in love with story goods stories, we're giving them short lessons in phonics and instruction. And now, this is the third thing I mentioned earlier, and that is that we want to find books that make reading irresistible, that really lure our kids into wanting to read. And this is where book series come in and they are so helpful. If you can figure out a series of books that will be of really high interest to your child, you can ignite the enthusiasm that they really need to break through those hardest days of learning how to read. It propels them, it gives them a motivation to struggle up that mountain, and to want to do it again. Once they bond with a favorite character, they've got some skin in the game. They can't wait to find out what happens next, which is why a series works so well for this. They feel like they're visiting a friend and they can't wait to find out what happens next in the series. (21:00): Now, every child is different and you never really know which series is going to work for each child, but chances are good that something on our list will do the trick. And in fact, yes, we have a whole list of our favorite books to hook your developing readers. This is a list that we just recently updated, so definitely be sure to check it out. There's got to be something on this list that will capture your child. There is such a great variety. These are chapter books that are meant to lure in or hook your developing readers, kids who can read but still need relatively short chapter books with some illustrations sprinkled in there, some high interest plots and characters, lots of adventure. Book series that just get your kid to want to read some more. (21:48): And one of the keys here is that when your child can read, but it hasn't become easy yet, this is a very critical part of your child's reading life. This is what we mean by developing readers, kids who can read, but it's not quite easy. The best way to make it easy for them is for them just to get better at it. The best way to get better at it is just to read a large quantity of words. If your child reads a large quantity of words, reading will get easier. And as it gets easier, they will enjoy it more. It's just the way it works. And this is why a series, I think, can help so much because it helps us get in that large quantity of words, in stories that our kids really enjoy and really like. (22:33): So, let me just give you a couple ideas of what's on this list and you'll find the whole list in the show notes, readaloudrevival.com/172, because this is episode 172. There's a series on this list called Ranger in Time by Kate Messner. And this is a series about a search and rescue dog named Ranger who ends up having these time-traveling adventures. They're action packed. They're page turny. And you don't have to tell your kids this part, but they'll actually teach your kids a bunch of history while they're reading, because they're set at different times in history. The first one I believe is set on the Oregon Trail, they are about all different kinds of history, but like I said, they're action packed there. If your kids love dogs, they're going to love this book. Kids who love this series, love this series. Called Ranger in Time. (23:22): Another series that I've heard kids raving about is it's called The Last Firehawk series. This one begins with The Ember Stone. It's a fantasy and adventure story series. It's got magic and lots of fast paced action, which is really good for these kids who are developing readers because it propels them. If the story is fast and a little bit flashy, it propels them forward. It helps them. As they're climbing up that mountain, it's like having a gust of wind helping them push them up. That's a terrible metaphor, but I bet you have the image in mind that I'm going for. Okay. My own son, he's now 15, but many years ago when I was trying to hook him at his developing reader stage, he inhaled the Encyclopedia Brown books. He loved those. (24:12): There's a series on this list called The Magical Animal Adoption Agency books by Kelly George. These are about a girl named Clover who's always unlucky, but then in the first book she stumbles upon a cottage in the woods that turns out to be an adoption agency for magical creatures like unicorns and baby dragons. My daughter Clara is obsessed with the Clementine books by Sara Pennypacker. These are like Ramona Quimby, but oh my goodness, they're so funny. Okay, I'll stop. There's a whole list of these books in today's show notes. We've got lots of series listed there. What we did for that series, there's a printed list there you can grab, there's also the list you can just view online, is we just listed the first book in each series to get you going. And in just one second, I'm going to tell you what to do to really hook your child on a series. (25:07): But you can just check out the list and pick a series or just skim through it and see, "Hmm. Based on what my child likes and is interested in, which one of these series might have the greatest chance of hooking them?" And you might have to try a couple. You might try The Magical Adoption Agency series and it doesn't stick, and so then you try something else and see if that sticks it. Any of these series might hook your reader. It's a taste thing, we got to just, as Laura Martin likes to say, "We have to keep looking for the right jelly bean. Just because you don't like the black jelly bean, the licorice flavored jelly bean, doesn't mean you don't like jelly beans. It means you don't like that flavor. So, you just keep digging around for the right one." (25:47): Okay. So, let me give you the real secret juice here to how to use a series like this to hook your developing reader. Because it's more than just finding the books and shoving them at your kids. What I suggest is that you choose a series from the list that you think might appeal to your young reader, and then you read the first one out loud. Okay, this is my secret sauce here. I really think this works so often. So, you read the very first book in that series out loud. Now, these aren't usually amazing read alouds because they're chapter books. They're written for kids who are developing readers. They're written for kids to read to themselves, so you're not going to find the same quality of language as you would in a book that we normally recommend you reading aloud, but it's short and you're going to be fine. (26:31): So, you're just going to read the first book out loud, and if the book is received unenthusiastic, you just choose another series and read aloud the first book from that one. You're going to do that until you find a series that your child really engages with. Okay, so let's say you have a child who really falls in love with Nate the Great, let's say. You're going to read that first book out loud, and when your child then expresses some displeasure at the book coming to an end, you get to deliver the good news. There are more mysteries that Nate the Great solves, lots of them. So, then what you do is you purchase the second book in this series if you can, and you can always get it from the library, but the reason I suggest purchasing the second book in the series is because if you buy it, then you're not feeling rushed by library due dates if it takes your child a bit of time to get through it. Because once you have that second book, you're going to hand it to your child and tell them that you won't be reading this one aloud, but you could probably read much of it on your own and I can help you with anywhere you get stuck. (27:42): So, you've read the first Nate the Great, let's say, and your child loves Nate the Great, let's say, and then you have the second book and you say, "Gosh, I don't have time to read this one out loud to you, but I bet you could probably read most of this one on your own." Another tip here is to encourage your child then to read it when you're nearby. Maybe you're cooking dinner or folding laundry or something, so you're nearby and you're available so that they can say, "Mom, what's this word?" But you're not hovering, you don't have to sit next to them and look at all the words. It's okay if they read some of them wrong, it's not that big of a deal. They'll still get the gist of the story. So, you don't have to make sure they can read every single word just right. You don't need to hover. So, maybe you're cooking dinner, maybe you're folding laundry, maybe you're changing the baby's diaper, maybe you're doing 100 other things you've got to do today, but they can maybe read it nearby and you can tell them, "When you stumble or need help with the word, just ask me." (28:33): Here's the key, when your child needs help with a word, don't ask them to sound it out. You do that during a phonics lesson, you do that during your school day if you're teaching your child how to read, but for this key system of trying to lure your child into a series, you don't say, "You know how to read that word or you read that word yesterday, I know you know how to read it or just sound it out." No, just resist that. When your child struggles with a word, just tell them what the word is. Because your goal here isn't to get extra phonics practice in. We've got to keep our first goal primary, top of mind. Our goal is to help our child want to read so that then they have some intrinsic motivation that propels them through those tough moments up the mountain, so that they want to pick up the book and they know this is going to be enjoyable and, dare I say, easy because if I get to a word I don't know, I can ask my parents to tell me what the word means. You're doing your child a better service just to tell them the word then to ask them to sound it out. (29:44): If the book ends up being too hard and your child gets frustrated, you can just try sitting next to him or her and just read any book that they struggle with. You can even read most of the book to your child and simply encourage them to read the shorter sentences or the last word of a sentence or phrases here and there. So, this is probably a good time to remind you of something we say all the time at readaloudrevival, especially in our classes in RAR premium, you can't help your child too much so don't worry about making this too easy on them. You want this to be easy on them. The most important thing is that you don't ruin this story by trying to turn it into a lesson. Let your child love the story and let them fall in love with the story. The reading skill will come with time, especially the more often they do it, and they'll be more inclined to do it more often if it's an enjoyable, easy process for them. (30:41): This is the exact system I used for my son. He was a developing reader at nine, he was a later reader and we did exactly this. And he went from reading first and second grade level of readers to reading large middle grade fantasy novels in the span of about a month. It was astounding. My daughters had similar experiences when they transitioned from struggling through sounding out sentences to fluently cruising through books. I think the key is to make sure you're reading aloud regularly, you're doing consistent daily work with phonics at a separate time of day, a school time of day, and then you're helping them fall in love with a series of books that is impossible for them to resist. (31:24): It takes a little patience and it takes a little trust on your part. And also, I want to just remind you that learning to read takes the time that it takes so we can't rush it. No amount of whatever you do is going to rush the process. Your child's going to learn when they're ready to learn. So, just having a bit of patience and a bit of trust that your kids will fall in love with books if you can create an environment where that's likely to happen, you read aloud a lot, you let it all unfold the way it wants to, and you keep your kids stocked in books that are hard to resist. Again, the list for the series that we recommend for this exact thing is at readaloudrevival.com/172. (32:09): Now, it's time for let the kids speak. I love this part of the podcast because kids share the books that they've been loving lately. Zach (32:26): Hi, my name is Zach. I live in Illinois. My favorite series is The Stern Case of Origami Yoda stories. Some parts are funny in it, some parts aren't. And I'm eight years old, almost nine. Katherine (32:47): Hi, my name is Katherine. I am eight years old and I live in California. My favorite book is the Green Ember series by S. D. Smith. I like it because they're very adventurous. Shawn (33:01): Hello. My name is Sean. I live in California. I am five years old and my favorite book is Magic Tree House. It's written by Mary Pope Osbourne and I like it because it is adventurous and they go back in time. Raina (33:22): Hi, I'm Raina from Wisconsin. My age is six and a half and I like Ramona books. I like it because she gets in predicaments and it's super funny. Speaker 9 (33:34): What's your name? Speaker 10 (33:34): [inaudible 00:33:39]. Speaker 9 (33:39): How old are you? Speaker 10 (33:40): Two. Speaker 9 (33:40): Where are you from? Speaker 10 (33:40): [inaudible 00:33:48]. Speaker 9 (33:48): What's your favorite book? Speaker 10 (33:48): The High [inaudible 00:33:51]. Speaker 9 (33:48): [inaudible 00:33:54]. Eli (33:55): Hi, my name is Eli and I live in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I'm eight years old. And my favorite book is I Am a Shark by Bob Shea, and I like it because the shark is cool. Caleb (34:11): My name is Caleb and I am seven. I live in Knoxville, Tennessee. And my favorite book is The Magician's Nephew, and I like it because it has a lot of pages and detail. Juliet (34:30): Hi, my name is Juliet [inaudible 00:34:32] years old. I live in Tennessee. I like a lot of books but one of my favorites is The Green Ember. I like this book because it has a lot of animals, and I also like it because it's exciting. Sunny (34:44): Hi, I'm Sunny from Massachusetts and my favorite book is My Father's Dragon and... Speaker 14 (34:54): Why do you like it? Sunny (34:57): I like it because there's a boy who meets all of these animals that don't like him, but he helps him with their problems and that's how they get to like him more. Ariel (35:12): Hi, I'm Ariel from Massachusetts, and my favorite book is The Prairie Thief. It's because it's surprised me. Sarah (35:21): Thank you, kids. Listen, you'll find all the series I mentioned in today's show in our show notes at readaloudrevival.com/172. Like I said earlier, the best way to get our book lists, first, when they are hot off the presses or we freshly updated them. And we actually update one to two of our booklets every single month. We're always very hard at work here at readaloudrevival, reading and adding and updating those lists for you. So, you really want to be on the email list, so you get first dibs on those. You're probably missing several of our free and amazing and helpful resources if you're just listening here on the podcast. So, head to readaloudrevival.com/subscribe and pop your email in there, so you don't miss out on any of the good stuff. I'll be back in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, you know what to do, go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.