"The moment my oldest child was born, I reached for an anthology of Romantic poetry that I have owned for decades and began reading. "Sweet joy befall thee," I said to my baby, through tears, bestowing a blessing with the words of William Blake. The benediction was unplanned. I had brought the book to the hospital for myself, along with a memoir by Shirley Jackson and a pile of well-worn novels,"
"As a child, I had read more or less continuously to myself, with breaks only here and there: for dinner, for math class, for college graduation. I couldn't imagine why anything should change now that I'd become a parent. Still, it felt rude to keep my eyes on a book when I had a baby in my arms, who, I had been told, was born with the capacity to see only as far as his mother's face- my face."
A parent reached for Romantic poetry at the birth of the eldest child and immediately read aloud, blessing the newborn with William Blake's line. Favorite books were brought to the hospital and shared aloud rather than kept private. The practice of reading aloud created a way to connect with that child and later with four more children. A U.K. survey by NielsenIQ BookData with children's-book publishers found frequent parental read-aloud rates for children ages 4 and younger fell from 64 percent in 2012 to 41 percent recently. The decline signals a missed opportunity to instill early enjoyment of reading.
Read at The Atlantic
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