The Reader's Hug

The Reader’s Hug. Barbara Joosse’s take on reading aloud to children:

Like adults, many children cocoon themselves from a world that's busy, confusing and sometimes scary. Even the conversation of a well-meaning adult is often received as so much blah blah blah. How, then, can we touch a child?

By its very nature, a picture book offers refreshing possibilities. Because it's often read many times, a picture book can be absorbed slowly, at a child's own pace. When it's read just before bed, at the delicious interval between sleep and awake, a child's book-companion can accompany her into her private dream world. Finally, when a picture book is read out loud, the reader and listener are often wrapped in a hug, the child's ear just at your heart, with the book you share the seal of the hug.

The world portrayed in a picture book can be gentle or harsh, familiar or new, internal or external, but it must, I believe, always be hopeful. If the universal adult emotion is longing, the universal child emotion is belonging. A picture book should portray a world in which a child-in fact, this particular listener child-belongs.