Friday, April 12, 2013

Story Comprehension Reading - Part ll



     I just read an interview with Bob Staake in Children's Bookshelf, about his new wordless picture book, Bluebird. I was really struck by something he said in the interview:

" I love writing visually, and wordlessly, because this is was how I read books as a kid. I didn’t really read, but I was a voracious page turner. Nothing would delight me more than pulling out old National Geographics and encyclopedias and looking through the pictures. For years, I have said that this is how children learn how to read. They don’t read, they look. Parents sometimes denigrate the importance of looking in favor of reading the words. It is just as important."

  This is the same philopshy as my Story Comprehension Reading Method - and seeing this meant so much! It also emphasizes the fact that the wordless book component of the method has to be expertly done for this method to actually work. Anyway, I will continue to research it.

     On another note, Publisher's Weekly had a column today asking what book first made you love reading? For me it was the Old Mother West Wind books by Thornton Burgess. I remember going to my local public library and visiting them on the shelf, along after I had first read them, as if going to see an old friend.

    What was the first book that made you love reading?

    And do those books seem like old friends to you?