The Enchanted Hour

by Meghan Cox Gurdon

  no pedagogical value whatsoever: Judy DeLoache et al., “Do Babies Learn from Baby Media?,” Psychological Science 21 (November 2010), https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610384145.

  no evidence that babies learned from the screens: Rebekah Reichert, Michael B. Robb, Jodi G. Fender, and Ellen Wartella, “Word Learning from Baby Videos,” May 2010, downloaded to ArchPediatrics.com, March 28, 2011, http://cmhd.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Richert.Robb_.Fender.Wartella.2010.-WordLearning.pdf.

  six to eight fewer new vocabulary words: University of Washington, “Baby DVDs, Videos May Hinder, Not Help, Infants’ Language Development,” Science Daily, August 8, 2007, accessed April 13, 2018, https://www.science daily.com/releases/2007/08/070808082039.htm.

  there’s not contingency”: Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, interview by author, July 26, 2016.

  technoference is a real issue for many children: McDaniel and Radesky, “Technoference.”

  For a glimpse of a child’s perspective: Anna V. Sosa, “Association of the Type of Toy Used During Play with the Quantity and Quality of Parent-Infant Communication,” JAMA Pediatrics 170 (February 2016), https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.3753.

  These babies were indifferent to: Patricia K. Kuhl, Feng-Ming Tsao, and Huei-Mei Liu, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100 (July 22, 2003), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1532872100.

  Twelve years later: Barbara T. Conboy, Rechele Brooks, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Patricia Kuhl, “Social Interaction in Infants’ Learning of Second Language Phonetics: An Exploration of Brain-Behavior Relations,” Developmental Neuropsychology 40 (2015), https://doi.org/10.1080/87 565641.2015.1014487.

  begin to make eye contact: Molly McElroy, “Babies’ Brains Show That Social Skills Linked to Second Language Learning,” UW News, July 27, 2015, http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/07/27/babies-brains-show-that-social-skills-linked-to-second-language-learning/.

  Watching video excerpts: The link can be found in McElroy.

  he had glimpsed, like Moses: Vygotsky compared himself to Moses in a private notebook shortly before he died. The quotation is cited in several places, most accessibly here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev _Vygotsky.

  his writing was translated: Lev Vygotsky, Thought and Language (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964).

  play is for children a crucial mechanism for self-discovery: Vygotsky, Thought and Language, cited in David K. Dickinson et al., “How Reading Books Fosters Language Development Around the World,” Child Development Research, 2012, 3, https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/602807.

  “Children benefit when”: Dickinson et al., 3.

  Fast-paced TV shows: Angeline S. Lillard and Jennifer Peterson, “The Immediate Impact of Different Types of Television on Young Children’s Executive Function,” Pediatrics 128 (May 2011), http://pediatrics.aap publications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2011/09/08/peds.2010–1919.full.pdf.

  work done at twenty-two Head Start centers: Karen L. Bierman et al., “Promoting Academic and Social-Emotional School Readiness: The Head Start REDI Program,” Child Development 79 (November/December 2008), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467–8624.2008.01227.x. The study is also helpfully summarized in “New Program Teaches Preschoolers Reading Skills, Getting Along with Others,” NIH News, November 2008, https://www.nichd.nih.gov/news/releases/nov19-08-New-Program.

  “How Reading Books Fosters”: The three colleagues are Julie A. Griffith, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, and Kathy Hirsch-Pasek.

  “related to less aggression”: Dickinson et al., “How Reading Books Fosters Language Development,” 3.

  longer periods of joint attention: Dickinson et al., 3.

  “Consider all the ways”: Dickinson et al., 6.

  “He’s just lying here and playing”: Steiner-Adair, Big Disconnect, 70.

  “babies are often distressed”: Steiner-Adair, 71.

  “All very successful technologies end up”: Dr. Perri Klass, interview by author, October 3, 2016.

  Theory of mind: For an accessible explanation, see Brittany N. Thompson, “Theory of Mind: Understanding Others in a Social World,” Psychology Today, July 3, 2017, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/socioemotional-success/201707/theory-mind-understanding-others-in-social-world.

  2015 program in the north of England: Lizzie Atkinson, “Sharing Stories, Shaping Futures: Language Development and the Shared Reading Model,” Eye 17, no. 8 (December 2015): 41.

  “I was reading Solomon Crocodile”: Atkinson, 41.

  “The wind whispers soft through the grass, hon”: Adam Mansbach, Go the F**k to Sleep, ill. Richard Cortes (New York: Akashic, 2011), 7.

  especially important to create a calm hiatus: Matt Wood, “Electronic Devices, Kids and Sleep: How Screen Time Keeps Them Awake,” Science Life, University of Chicago, February 17, 2016, https://sciencelife.uchospitals.edu/2016/02/17/electronic-devices-kids-and-sleep-how-screen-time-keeps-them-awake/.

  “Repetition and structure help children feel safe”: Marie Hartwell-Walker, “The Value of a Child’s Bedtime Ritual,” Psychnet.com, July 17, 2016, https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-value-of-a-childs-bedtime-rou tine/.

  “The first couple of weeks”: Walter Olson and Steve Pippin, interview by author, June 13, 2016.

  Chapter 5: The Rich Rewards of a Vast Vocabulary

  a young mother named Cécile de Brunhoff made up a story: Simon Worrall, “Laurent de Brunhoff Reveals Shocking Beginning of Beloved Babar Series,” National Geographic, December 23, 2014, https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141224-babar-elephant-culture-animal-conservation-ngbooktalk/.

  followed by six sequels by Jean de Brunhoff: The titles and dates of most of the Babar books are most easily obtained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babar_the_Elephant. This list omits the nine Babar books published since 2003 including the final book in the series, the surprisingly dull Babar’s Guide to Paris. (In a December 27, 2017, review in the Wall Street Journal, I wrote: “For the year’s most disappointing illustrations, we need look no farther than Laurent de Brunhoff’s valedictory picture book, “Babar’s Guide to Paris” [Abrams], a volume with illustrations so devoid of interest, so blank and lifeless, that they seem more like templates than finished drawings. Mr. de Brunhoff, who is in his 90s, has valiantly carried on the work of his father in continuing the adventures of the little elephant Babar that began in 1931, but he seems to have forgotten what used to make the books compelling. The stories were always a bit stilted, but they were saved by illustrations rich in thoughtful detail and full of dynamic modes of transport. The Babar books once teemed with cars, boats, planes, camels, elevators, elephants and hot-air balloons. At one point in this bland and inadvertently gloomy offering, Babar and Celeste dine in a featureless brasserie off empty plates and sip from unfilled glasses.”)

  a certain amount of low-level controversy: Adam Gopnik, “Freeing the Elephants: Babar Between the Exotic and the Domestic Imagination of France,” in Christine Nelson, Drawing Babar: Early Drafts and Watercolors (New York: Morgan Library & Museum, 2008), 2–3.

  “Words are as wild as rocky peaks”: Leonard S. Marcus, The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy (Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2006), 74.

  “If your attitude to language”: Jon Henley, “Philip Pullman: Loosening the Chains of the Imagination,” Guardian, August 23, 2013. Cited in Mary Roche, Developing Children’s Critical Thinking Through Picturebooks: A Guide for Primary and Early Years Students and Teachers (London: Routledge, 2015), 56.

  language improves a person’s ability to succeed: “Reading proficiency by the third grade is the most important predictor of high school graduation and career success.” Council on Early Childhood, “Literacy Promotion,” 405.

  Young children whose heads are well stocked: “Earlier age of initiation of reading aloud with a child has been shown to be associated with better preschool language skills and increased interest in reading.” Council on Early Childhood, 405.

&nbs
p; As neurobiologist Maryanne Wolf explains: Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 129.

  the Matthew effect: This term has been in broad circulation since Oakland University professor Keith Stanovich used it in his paper “Matthew Effects in Reading: Some Consequences of Individual Differences in the Acquisition of Literature,” Reading Research Quarterly, Fall 1986, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8b88/41a79b3bd90dadd5ee04df8cf7 cb63249eba.pdf. Other academic inquiries include W. B. Elley, “Vocabulary Acquisition from Listening to Stories,” Reading Research Quarterly 24, no. 1 (2002): 174–87; and J. F. Penno et al., “Vocabulary Acquisition from Teacher Explanation and Repeated Listening to Stories: Do They Overcome the Matthew Effect?,” Journal of Educational Psychology 94, no. 1 (2002): 23–33; both cited in Dickinson et al., “How Reading Books Fosters Language Development,” 4.

  revisit the original subject families for a 2003 report: Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3,” 2003, https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/The EarlyCatastrophe.pdf/.

  encouraged conversation through affirmations: Hart and Risley, Meaningful Differences, cited in Dickinson et al., “How Reading Books Fosters Language Development,” 5.

  researchers at Indiana University, Bloomington: Montag, Jones, and Smith, “Words Children Hear,” 1489–96.

  “shared book reading,” “Unlike conversations,” “a child would hear”: Montag, Jones, and Smith, 1494.

  low in socioeconomic status: Council on Early Childhood, “Literacy Promotion,” 405.

  a 2013 Stanford University study: Weisleder and Fernald, “Talking to Children Matters.”

  “When you look at the content”: Tamis-LeMonda, interview.

  “She will ask me to read”: Magda Jenson, interview by author, June 2016.

  One night the girls and I arrived at the scene: This anecdote is adapted from Meghan Cox Gurdon, “I Love This Story!,” NRO, February 4, 2004, https://www.nationalreview.com/2004/02/i-love-story/.

  Researchers at the University of Sussex: Jessica S. Horst, Kelly L. Parsons, and Natasha M. Bryan, “Get the Story Straight: Contextual Repetition Promotes Word Learning from Storybooks,” Frontiers in Psychology 2 (February 17, 2011), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.17.

  “Children learn vocabulary through grammar”: Dickinson et al., “How Reading Books Fosters Language Development,” 5.

  “three mothers and an eggplant”: P. L. Chase-Lansdale and E. Takanishi, How Do Families Matter? Understanding How Families Strengthen Their Children’s Educational Achievement (New York: Foundation for Child Development, 2009). Cited widely, including in Dickinson et al., “How Reading Books Fosters Language Development,” 5.

  interactive reading or dialogic reading: There’s a huge body of literature devoted to the power and practice of this method. To learn more, see Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst, “Dialogic Reading: An Effective Way to Read to Preschoolers,” Reading Rockets, http://www.readingrockets.org/article/dialogic-reading-effective-way-read-preschoolers; and Roche, Developing Children’s Critical Thinking.

  remember it far better than those who get straightforward instruction: Myae Han, Noreen Moore, Carol Vukelich, and Martha Buell, “How Play Intervention Affects the Vocabulary Learning of At-Risk Preschoolers,” American Journal of Play 3, no. 1 (2010): 82–105.

  “The child learns best”: Roberta Michnik Golinkoff, interview by author, July 27, 2016.

  “If you’re reading with a one-year-old”: Caroline Rowland, Skype interview by author, June 27, 2016.

  The endpapers may be designed: I am grateful to Mary Roche for reminding me of this useful point in Developing Children’s Critical Thinking, 34–39.

  an occasional, gentle “I wonder why?”: Roche, 17.

  a skill known as auditory discrimination: Jane Fidler, interview by author, March 23, 2016.

  even dogs have shown under MRI scanning: Karin Brulliard, “Your Dog Really Does Know What You’re Saying, and a Brain Scan Shows How,” Washington Post, August 31, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/08/30/confirmed-your-dog-really-does-get-you.

  As Jim Trelease . . . points out: “A consistent mistake made by parents and teachers is the assumption that a child’s listening level is the same as his or her reading level. Until about eighth grade, that is far from true; early primary grade students listen many grades above their reading level. This means that early primary grade students are capable of hearing and understanding stories that are far more complicated than those they can read themselves.” Trelease on Reading.com, http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/hey.html.

  “the overall gist of what they are hearing or reading”: E. D. Hirsch Jr., “Vocabulary Declines, with Unspeakable Results,” Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2012.

  “There’s a hidden form of vocabulary”: Doug Lemov, “Doug Lemov on Teaching,” interview by Russ Roberts, EconTalk podcast, Library of Economics and Liberty, http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/12/doug _lemov_on_t.html.

  when he’s older: Dialogic reading tends naturally to fade when children are around the age of five or six and shifting, during read-aloud time, from interest chiefly in picture books to longer stories without illustration. See Dickinson, “How Reading Books Fosters Language Development,” 9.

  “‘I fear yet to stir’”: Bram Stoker, Dracula (Ware, England: Wordsworth Editions, 1993), 306.

  “‘the body of Szgany’”: The term Szgany, sometimes spelled Tziganes, is no longer current. Like gypsy, a descriptor for the Romany people that is considered in some quarters to be retrograde and offensive.

  Chapter 6: The Power of Paying Attention—and Flying Free

  “It seems that mankind is born”: Sybil Marshall, The Book of English Folktales (New York: Overlook, 2016), 17.

  good for the soul: James Hillman, “A Note on Story,” in Children’s Literature: The Great Excluded, vol. 3, ed. Francelia Butler and Bennett Brockman (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974), https://muse.jhu.edu/article/245875. Cited in Manguel, History of Reading, 11.

  “A good book is an empathy machine”: Libraries Unlimited (@Libraries UnLtd), “Reading allows us to see & understand the world through the eyes of others. A good book is an empathy machine,” Twitter, June 13, 2017.

  On a recent winter day: Author visit to Park School, Baltimore, February 4, 2016.

  Technology is training us: For a full discussion, see Adam Alter, “The Biology of Behavioral Addiction,” in Alter, Irresistible, 68–89.

  “You have whole generations”: Simon & Schuster president and CEO Carolyn Reidy, speaking at the Frankfurt Book Fair, October 11, 2017, in remarks widely reported at the time, including by Alex Mutter, Shelf Awareness, October 12, 2017, http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3105#m38147.

  tiny doses of pleasing chemicals: Alter, Irresistible, 68–89.

  the attention span of the average adult: Alter, 28.

  “the true scarce commodity”: Satya Nadella, open memo to Microsoft employees, July 10, 2014. Cited widely, including by Polly Mosendz, “Microsoft’s CEO Sent a 3,187 Word Memo and We Read It So You Don’t Have To,” Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/microsofts-ceo-sent-a-3187-word-memo-and-we-read-it-so-you-dont-have-to/374230/.

  as Jim Trelease has pointed out: Quoted in Connie Matthiessen, “The Hidden Benefits of Reading Aloud—Even for Older Kids,” GreatSchools.org, September 22, 2017, https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/read-aloud-to-children/.

  Studies have uncovered a strong correlation: Megan M. McClelland et al., “Relations Between Preschool Attention Span-Persistence and Age 25 Educational Outcomes,” Early Child Research Quarterly 28 (April 2014), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2012.07.008.

  “This went on for weeks”: Olson and Pippin, interview.

  “Sometimes her voice put me to sleep”: Manguel, History of Reading, 109–10.

  “It can turn a
child into a writer”: Kate DiCamillo, “Kate DiCamillo’s PSA: On the Importance of Reading Aloud to Children,” YouTube, posted February 17, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0c9-JM-mvoo.

  by the time kids turn five: Scholastic, Kids & Family Reading Report, 5th ed. (New York: Scholastic, 2015), 31–33, http://www.scholastic.com/read ingreport/Scholastic-KidsAndFamilyReadingReport-5thEdition.pdf.

  “f u cn rd ths”: For a nostalgic glimpse of the ubiquitous “School of Speedwriting” ads, see https://playingintheworldgame.com/2012/09/21/f-u-cn-rd-ths-if-you-can-read-this/.

  “You hear it, and it’s a story”: Tatar, interview.

  “Many of the references”: Marcus, Wand in the Word, 173.

  He was thrilled by the story: This anecdote is adapted from Gurdon, “I Love This Story!”

  accused of being easy shortcuts: Remember Matthew Rubery’s story about his father’s friend, who apologized for claiming that he’d read a book when he had listened to it? As Rubery said, “It’s viewed as cheating all the time.” Rubery, interview.

  “We were never born to read”: Wolf, Proust and the Squid, 3.

  Yet our brains seem not to keep close records: Rubery, interview.

  a middle-school teacher in Wisconsin: Timothy Dolan, “The Power of Reading Aloud in Middle School Classrooms,” Education Week: Teacher, March 22, 2016, https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2016/03/22/the-power-of-reading-aloud-in-middle.html.

  “While I felt guilty”: Michael Godsey, “The Value of Using Podcasts in Class,” Atlantic, March 17, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/the-benefits-of-podcasts-in-class/473925/.

  “I say, ‘How did you pass high school?’”: Fidler, interview.

  “Every time my mother became pregnant”: Roald Dahl, Boy (London: Puffin, 2010), 18–19.

  “They gaped. They screamed”: Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach, ill. Lane Smith (New York: Puffin, 1996), 42.

  “shock effects of beauty and horror”: Tatar, Enchanted Hunters, 29.