What to Read Aloud When Your Kids Are Eleven, Eight and Two

Anyway, the book bag. I left it off my packing list and it's the heaviest thing we brought to the cabin, heavier than the cooler.

Thursday night I got to the chapter in Charlotte's Web where Charlotte dies. Lily had read the table of contents and knew the chapter was called "Last Day," and she'd asked me twice at dinner if we could skip it. Caleb had been asleep in the loft for ten minutes, or his pillow had been over his face for ten minutes, and he came down the ladder in his socks the moment I stopped to blow my nose. Ben was a shape in the pack-and-play at the far end of the room with the sound machine going. I taught third grade for five years and read that chapter to a classroom every one of them, and I have never once got through it with a steady voice. So I'm no authority on that part. I do know a few things about the rest, and most of what's written about read-alouds assumes two kids a year and a half apart.

Can an eleven-year-old and an eight-year-old really share one book?

Yes, as long as you pick for the older one, because a read-aloud should sit above what either child would choose to read alone. That's the whole reason to do it. An eight-year-old can follow a story two grade levels up when somebody else is carrying the hard words, and the eleven-year-old gets to stay interested instead of being talked down to. If you only ever read what suits the youngest, the oldest will start finding things to do upstairs.

Your two limits are the older one's patience and the younger one's nightmares. A book that clears both is fine. If a scene is too much for the eight-year-old you can sand it down as you go, and nobody checks the page. "The giant went away" is a perfectly good sentence.

The eleven-year-old pretending to be asleep is listening, by the way. I'd stake the car on it.

The books I'd reach for

Charlotte's Web first, because it reads like it was meant to be said out loud. The sentences are short enough to breathe in and the chapters stop where you'd want to stop. Wilbur is easy to love at eight and Templeton the rat is the best thing in it for an eleven-year-old, who knows exactly what Templeton is like. Have a tissue near you for chapter twenty-one.

The Tale of Despereaux is the one for a family that likes words. Kate DiCamillo's narrator keeps talking to you directly, "Reader" this and "Reader" that, and it gives the person holding the book something to do with her voice. The dungeon chapters are dark. I'd read those in daylight and leave the bedtime chapters for the mouse and the soup.

The BFG, because Roald Dahl made up half the vocabulary and you get to say frobscottle with a straight face. Eleven-year-olds love being in on a joke that's a little rude. The eight-year-old will want the whizzpopping chapter twice. The giants who eat children are scary on paper and a lot less scary in your own kitchen light, which is a point in favor of reading it aloud and not leaving it to a flashlight under a quilt.

Homer Price, by Robert McCloskey, is six separate stories, so you can miss a night and lose nothing. That matters more than people admit, especially in a house where bedtime is sometimes a negotiation and sometimes a fire drill. The doughnut chapter, where the machine will not stop making doughnuts, is the one that gets a whole room laughing.

My Father's Dragon has chapters you can finish in a few minutes, so it's the one for the nights when everyone's frayed and you want to be done before anyone cries.

Farmer Boy, if you cook. Laura Ingalls Wilder spends a great deal of ink on what Almanzo eats, and the breakfast chapters will make a sixth-grader hungry. A boy of nine doing a man's chores will hold an eight-year-old and shame an eleven-year-old, which does no harm.

I'd skip The Trumpet of the Swan. It's by the same man who wrote Charlotte's Web and it wanders. Louis takes a job at a nightclub and somewhere in the middle you can feel two children deciding to ask for a different book. Narnia gets named on every one of these lists too, and it's fine, but I'd put it a notch below Wilbur for this particular age gap, because it asks the older child to wait for the story to start.

And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.

Doctrine and Covenants 88:118

I notice the verse doesn't say which books. A library card counts.

How do you read it so it holds both of them?

Read the last page of the chapter before you start. Not for spoilers, for your voice. A teacher learns that if you know where you're going you can slow down at the right sentence and speed up through the three paragraphs describing a barn.

You're allowed to skip the barn, or any page of description at all, and nobody under fourteen will notice.

Stop in the middle of something when you can, and not at a tidy chapter break. "Just one more" is the sound of a habit forming. If you've read straight through to a resting place, tomorrow's reading is a chore. If you stopped on the sentence where the door opens, they'll be asking by dinner.

Don't quiz them, no "what do you think Wilbur is feeling" at the end of every chapter and no vocabulary questions either. If somebody wants to talk about the book they'll talk, usually at a stoplight three days later and about a detail you'd forgotten you read.

Hand the eleven-year-old the villain's lines or the goose, or a page now and then. It costs you nothing and it turns him from an audience into a participant, which is the real danger at that age.

What does the two-year-old do?

A chapter book isn't for a two-year-old and he knows it. He mostly won't sit, and the sooner you stop expecting him to sit through twenty minutes on a lap the better the evening goes. What he can do is stay in the room. A basket of things that only come out at reading time works better than almost anything else I know of, as long as the basket really is only for reading time. Lacing cards, a paint-with-water book, a couple of chunky puzzles, a small bin of the felt animals. When the basket is old news, put different things in it.

Timing helps a great deal: after his nap and a snack, on the couch while he's still a little soft from sleep. Or push the chapter book to after he's down and give him his own picture book first, five minutes with everybody, so he's had his share and doesn't feel left out of something that's happening in his house.

If he walks in circles around the couch or flips through a board book upside down, he's fine. He's picking up the rhythm of sentences and that is the job. The quiet hour I wrote about in What I've Actually Tried With Three Kids Home All Summer is a good place to tuck this in, too.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is eleven too old to be read to?

No, and it's the age most likely to be quietly missing it. They'll act bored and they'll lean in anyway, and they'll still be in the room for the chapter when they're thirteen if you haven't made it babyish.

How long should a chapter be?

Whatever the chapter is, for the first few weeks. Fifteen or twenty minutes is about the limit for most kids this age. If a chapter runs long, split it at a place where something's about to happen, and don't apologize.

What if one of them hates the book?

Give it three chapters. If an eight-year-old is still squirming at chapter three, put it down. A book you've finished with resentment will cost you more than a book you quit.

Do I have to explain it or tie it to a lesson?

Please don't, since a story is allowed to just be a story, and they'll find the part that matters to them on their own schedule, and it's rarely the part you'd have underlined.

I've got the porch to myself for a few minutes and the thermometer by the door says 52. The lake is flat enough that I can see the far shore, and a squirrel has been working on the same raspberry stem on the rail for ten minutes. I'm going to find my sweater.

with love, Melissa