by Karen Boniface
April 3, 2020
Reading aloud should not end with childhood. It is not something to grow out of. It is something to keep growing into.
As teens come of age in a culture filled with chaos and confusion, books provide the perfect safe place to wrestle with questions about identity, purpose, relationships, and values. Stories draw us into the lives and worlds of characters we come to care about, sparking communication between parents and teens about important issues that concern them. Through sharing stories, parents can help guide teens to maturity, wisdom, and virtue.
Reading aloud, we learn to listen. To talk. To respect another’s thoughts and feelings.
In the movie I Remember Mama, a 1948 dramatization of Kathryn Forbes’s novel Mama’s Bank Account, an impoverished lodger—Jonathan Hyde—reads Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities aloud for Mama’s family. Hyde transports them to a world of sublime imagination. It’s one of my all-time favorite scenes.
Spoiler Alert!
The soundtrack ceases. The camera pans to the stricken faces of his listeners as a transformed alcoholic willingly lays down his life. Sir Cedric Hardwicke’s refined, sonorous voice perfectly expresses the tenor of the sacrificer’s parting words, the final lines of the book:
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
The family’s hearts are stirred by such supreme self-sacrifice. They are forever changed by such nobility.
When Hyde suddenly departs, he thanks Mama for her hospitality and leaves her a check in full payment for room and board. He also, much to the excitement of the children, leaves the classics he’s read aloud—A Tale of Two Cities among them. Later it’s proven that the sorely needed check is bad. While her sister vilifies Hyde as a crook, Mama recognizes the payment that Hyde did leave—the treasure of his books. She validates his dignity, much as the conclusion of Dickens’s novel exalts the sacrificer to heroic status:
“No,” Mama declares, “No. He owes us nothing.”
Without regret, she tosses the check into the fire.
Powerful!
Gladys Hunt in Honey for a Teen’s Heart writes about the importance of reading together well-selected books of this caliber: families can “grow close to each other by sharing what touches our hearts, what causes our mind to grow big with wonder, what injustices anger us, what questions the plot of a story insists upon asking.” She continues that “reading together provides opportunities for the discussions every family needs. Books are about someone else; that means we can look objectively at the characters’ choices and actions and discuss them. In addition, books delight, quicken the imagination, widen our world, and live in our hearts. Reading is not a luxury, but a necessity.”
Not only the reading itself but also the shared processing of a text is a necessity. Pause and ponder the significance of what you’re reading. Discuss questions like these . . .
- Author:
- What do we know about the author?
- What is the author’s purpose for writing?
- How is the author’s view of the world revealed in the book?
- Why is this view valid or flawed?
- Theme:
- What is the author’s message?
- Is it true?
- How does the author develop that theme?
- What values does the story promote or diminish? Explain whether you agree.
- Characters:
- To what extent is the main character admirable? Identify the chief character traits.
- Do moral restraints and boundaries govern the characters? What are the consequences of breaking societal “rules”?
- With what character do you most connect? Explain.
- Are the characters believable and their actions consistent?
- How do the characters evolve throughout the story? What triggers their change?
- What is the main character’s problem or conflict, and how is it solved or dealt with?
- Who narrates the story? How reliable is that point of view?
- Response to Author’s Craft:
- What was your emotional reaction to a character, scene, chapter, or the whole book? How has the author achieved this response in you?
- What did you notice in the book that is true, good, or beautiful? How does the author reveal it?
- What do you appreciate about the language and style of the author’s expression?
- Did certain parts of the book cause you discomfort? Did this tension lead to a new understanding or awareness of some aspect of your life you might not have thought about before?
- What do you like or dislike about the book?
And the best follow-up question to any of the questions above is What do you think about this? If teens can begin to reason critically about a literary microcosm, they will be better equipped to discern wisdom from falsehood in their own world.
Don’t let your teens isolate from the family as bookworms, and don’t “assign” reading tasks just to keep them busy and productive. I encourage you instead to open up the lines of communication by reading aloud and discussing books together.
If you want your teens to learn more in-depth about thinking through books, enroll them in a free class like “How to be a critical reader” from Open University
Of the scores of books we highly recommend besides A Tale of Two Cities, we’ve detailed a few below. For more information or help, contact us.