Story telling, and stories told.

My little brother Paul reading "Bearskin" (ill. Trina Schart Hyman) aloud.

My 7 year old Korean niece is creative, a trait she inherited from her mother.  Her drawings are full of detail, and are beginning to show active observation of the world around her. Most kids are busy drawing "symbols" of the world around them. (ex: the lolly-pop shaped things every child knows is a tree) My niece is beginning to observe reality, and incorporate details from it into her drawings. For example, she drew me as a princess surrounded by a cloud of diamonds, and she got my hair-do right. I don't have much contact with her, because they live, quite literally, on the other side of the world.  However, I do whatever I can to fan that spark of creativity.

I've sent her art supplies, but have been waiting until Christmas to send her some inspiration.  Various of my siblings pooled our money, and bought her the same books that inspired and enthralled us as children.  Some are still in print, but a fair amount of them are not, which makes finding good copies an "adventure."  We picked some books illustrated by Trina Schart Hymen, The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, and of course, some Dr. Suess.
Now here's the problem with our little scheme: my niece can't read english.

She can understand spoken english pretty well, though. So, I decided to record family members reading the books aloud to her.

I knew it would be a good gift to give, and one full of familial tradition.
For me, opening these books feels like coming home, the same way Southern Ohio hills are what looks like home, or the way bread rising smells like home, to me.

I was read to a lot as a child, and it was a wonderful, warm experience. My father read to us a great deal.  By the time I came along, many of my siblings had learned to imitate my father, and read aloud to the children younger than them.  My sister Mary was particularly enthusiastic about this.  There were probably hundreds of nights where she read to us while we worked on the dishes. We loved being read to, but hated doing dishes. We liked to stop mid-dish and just listen. I can still hear her saying "I won't keep reading unless you keep working."

I made sure that my father was one of the ones who I recorded.
He read "The Sleep Book" by Dr. Suess.
It's a book I can remember being read to me by his father.  Apparently my grandfather read to my father when he was a little boy, and so my father learned to bond with us by reading to us frequently.  We would perch on whichever of his limbs were most available.  Little kids got precedence over big kids, especially if it was a picture book.  The best spot, if he was lying on his stomach on the floor, was straddling his back, and peering over his shoulder at the book.




As I was preparing for the readings, I opened my favorite children's book again (The Mechanical Doll, ill. Trina Schart Hymen), and a phrase jumped out at me.  I heard it in my sister Mary's voice.  She was young, probably 18 or so, and trying to sound like a jaded, 60 year old man.  She slowed her chipper, clear alto into a world-weary drawl.  Her voice acting may have been over-the-top, but it sure worked for me.
The illustrations absorbed me completely, even though there's only one every 3-4 pages. That book is magic:

Isn't that peacock feather just delicious?  Plus, I love the bit of sulkiness in his angry face.  It saves him from simply being a vicious b*st*rd for hitting something as beautiful as that.

She devotes the same meticulous attention to every inch of her etching plates, creating a richly toned image full of intricate detail.  (I am a complete sucker for detail.)  
I didn't realize they were etchings until years later when I took a printing class.  I just thought they were ridiculously detailed drawings.

The thing is, I can hear the text so clearly in my sister's voice, but I can't for the life of me remember when she read it to me, or even picture where we were.

I hear The Jungle Book and most of Orson Scott Card's books in my father's voice (there are chunks I hear in my brother's voice, so I know he must've read it aloud too).  When I pick up Dr. Suess, I hear my grandfather's soft, scratchy voice. I hear Anne of Greene Gables in my sister Rachel's voice.  I hear "Mrs. Mike" in my sister Sarah's voice.  I hear so many books in my brother Jacob's voice.  among them are tit bits of "Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy,"Anne Fadiman essays, short stories by "Connie Willis" and just about anything he found humorous or interesting.

I can remember mourning, from a very young age, that there weren't more pictures in the Golden book of fairy tales.  The pictures there are are so very glorious, that I just always wanted more.

like I said, glorious. (this is apparently an illustration from Thumbelina, but I had to read it again to find the part where there was a frog with a crown in Thumbelina.)

Oh, that windswept hair! (the monkey is a creeper, though.  like a zombie monkey.)

These birds just make me laugh.


I drew my women like this throughout grade school (impossibly long neck and almost complete lack of nose notwithstanding):

I spent hours figuring out how to draw facets on jewels too, inspired by those rich pieces. (because of course Donkey Skin wore girdles of precious gems while hanging out with livestock and pretending to be a pig herder)

Guys were supposed to look like this:

especially those fantastic, perfectly articulated hands, and wonderful ankles.  You can tell she spent years being rigorously drilled in anatomy at art school, and then learned to exaggerate them somewhere else.

My father still reads aloud.  It's a highly specific love-language of his.  He reads to my mother frequently.  They used to read their prayer journals to each other.  Now he mostly reads her books about the Civil War.
He also reads to whichever of his children are around.  One of my "little" brothers is on break from college.  They've been trundling their way through some Asimov.  He reads to me too, but we're in between books.  We both like sci-fi, but our tastes in authors don't overlap much, and it's too soon since the last reading to revisit "Canticle for Leibowitz" or the Ender's Game series.

As I've been writing this, Dad picked up our copy of Cinderella.  It's a 1974 edition, illustrated by Sheilah Beckett.  He kept snickering at the bits mom altered so it wouldn't contain any magic. (It's a long story why she did this, but in our copy, the Fairy Godmother is now an Angel, magic is miracle, etc.)  He was truly moved by the way that Cinderella and Prince Charming gaze at each other across the page spread where they meet.

I think perhaps that's the secret of good reading aloud.  Dad slips behind the words, and believes in them himself, so that we, his listeners, could also be caught up in that imaginary world.

Dad's right about the gaze.  The prince is truly entranced.  I was too, when I saw the illustration, but mostly by the dress. Oh, how I wanted that dress!  And the hairstyle, which is held up by magic, er, miracle.  I know this, because I tried, repeatedly, to replicate it on my own head when I was little.

 Beckett has this neat trick of having a pretty limited tonal range (none of her lines are much darker than medium grey), yet conveying an atmospheric, deep space, full of detail and life.

I certainly placed myself inside the books.  On the last page of Cinderella, there's a little flower girl, that I was half convinced was me.  I did look a lot like that as a child. But it was the magic of the book: It made me want to be her, to be part of the story.