The Read-Aloud Handbook: Seventh Edition

424 Pages·2013·3.05 MB·English

by  Jim Trelease

Penguin Books The Read-Aloud Handbook
Before retiring from the lecture circuit in 2008, Jim Trelease spent thirty years
addressing parents, teachers, and librarians on the subjects of children, literature,
and the challenges of multimedia to print. A graduate of the University of
Massachusetts, he was an award-winning artist and writer for the Springfield
Daily News from 1963 to 1983.
Initially self-published in 1979, The Read-Aloud Handbook has had seven
American editions as well as British, Australian, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian,
and Spanish editions. Mr. Trelease is also the editor of two popular read-aloud
anthologies for Penguin: Hey! Listen to This, for grades K–4, and Read All
About It! for preteens and teens. In 2010, Penguin Books named The Read-Aloud
Handbook one of the seventy-five most important books it published in its
seventy-five-year history.
The father of two grown children, Mr. Trelease lives in Enfield, Connecticut,
with his wife, Susan. Although he occasionally scolds American fathers for
obsessing too much about sports, recent years have found him involved in one of
professional sports’ most famous moments, when it was accidentally discovered
that he had the only existing recording of the 1961 basketball game in which
Wilt Chamberlain scored one hundred points. Visit his Web page (www.trelease-
on-reading.com/wilt.html) for the story of how he came to make the recording
and how Chamberlain’s life intertwined with his own.
Jim Trelease’s lectures are available on both DVD and CD. For information,
go to www.trelease-on-reading.com.
It works with fathers, too.
The
Read-Aloud
Handbook
SEVENTH EDITION
Jim Trelease
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China Penguin Books Ltd,
Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England For more information about the Penguin
Group visit penguin.com The Read-Aloud Handbook first published in Penguin Books 1982
First revised edition published 1985
Second revised edition (with the title The New Read-Aloud Handbook) published 1989
Third revised edition published 1995
Fourth revised edition published 2001
Fifth revised edition published 2006
This sixth revised edition published 2013
Copyright © Jim Trelease, 1979, 1982, 1985, 1989, 1995, 2001, 2006, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted
materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Portions of this book were originally published in pamphlet form.
“Disgraceful Interrogations” by Hector Tobar, Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2011. Copyright © 2011.
Los Angeles Times. Reprinted with permission.
Page 351 constitutes an extension of this copyright page.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Trelease, Jim.
The read-aloud handbook / Jim Trelease.—Seventh edition.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-1-101-61386-3
1. Oral reading. I. Title.
LB1573.5.T68 2013
372.45’2—dc23 2013002348
Designed by Elke Sigal
To my grandchildren, Connor, Tyler, Kiernan, Tess, and Addisyn—the
best audiences an old reader-aloud could hope to find.
And to Alvin R. Schmidt, a ninth-grade English teacher in New Jersey
who found the time a half century ago to write to the parents of one of
his students to tell them they had a talented child. Neither he nor the
vote of confidence has ever been forgotten.
We must take care that children’s early encounters with reading are painless enough so they will cheerfully
return to the experience now and forever. But if it’s repeatedly painful, we will end up creating a school-time
reader instead of a lifetime reader.
Acknowledgments
T
HIS book could not have been written without the support and cooperation of
many friends, associates, neighbors, children, teachers, and editors. I especially
wish to acknowledge my everlasting gratitude to the late Mary A. Dryden, of
Springfield, Massachusetts, who started it all by convincing me to visit her
classroom forty-five years ago in the school that is now named in her honor.
I am also deeply indebted to my former editors and colleagues at the
Springfield Daily News for their long-standing support of staff involvement with
the community’s schoolchildren. It was this that provided the early impetus for
my experiences in the classroom. At the same time, I am particularly grateful to
my dear friend Jane Maroney, whose guiding hand shaped the initial concept of
this book. I never had a better, smarter, or wittier editor.
It is impossible to express adequately the gratitude I feel toward the hundreds
of individuals who, over the past three decades, took the time to share with me
their personal experiences with reading and children, only a fraction of which I
can use in each edition. For this edition, I am especially grateful to Melissa
Olans Antinoff; Jim and Kristen Brozina; Tom Corbett; Bianca Cotton and her
family; Kimberly Douglas; Henry Dutcher; Ellie Fernands; Jennie Fitzkee;
Nancy Foote; Linda, Jim, and Erin Hassett; Skip Johnson; Stephen Krashen;
Mary Kuntsal; Larry LaPrise; Cindy Lovell; Jade Malanson; Kathy Nozzolillo;
Mike Oliver; Tom O’Neill Jr.; Jennifer, Marcia, and Mark Thomas; the Trelease-
Keller-Reynolds clans of Massachusetts and Mississippi; Susan, Tad,
Christopher, and David Williams; and Marty and Joan Wood.
In addition, I would like to thank my neighbor Shirley Uman, whose
enthusiasm for my self-published edition back in 1979 was shared with a then-
fledgling literary agent, Raphael Sagalyn, who carried it home to Penguin
Books; Bee Cullinan for her early encouragement; my Penguin editors, Rebecca
Hunt and Kathryn Court, for their faith and support through the book’s three
decades; and a lovely woman named Florence of Arlington, who wrote the