Reading Aloud with Kids (and Adults)

Have you ever been reading along through all of the wonderful posts of your favorite bloggers, found something wonderful that you wanted to share, and then never found it again?   That's been my experience over and over again.  So many blogs, so little time, so many books, so little time!  This is my continual lament.  Recently I have read several wonderful blog posts about reading aloud, and being read to, especially as children.  I thought I had saved links to the blogs, and even thought that I had added my comments, but now I can't find them.  So, today I've been conducting searches.  I haven't found the blog posts that I was looking for yet, but I did find some new thoughts on reading to children:

Becky Morecraft's Blog shares a favorite poem by Stickland Gillian.

Pages of Julia talks about being read to as a child, audiobooks, and reading aloud as an adult.

This March 2010 New York Times Article tells how a Mr Brozina read to his daughter for 3,218 straight nights.

I personally was read to as a child, by parents, grandparents and siblings.  I love reading, and I have loved reading stories to my own children throughout the past 27 or so years, even on the nights when I was so tired that I would start to doze off, and the words coming out of my mouth didn't exactly match the words in the storybooks. 

Were you read to as a child?  Do you read aloud to your children?  Do you read aloud as an adult?  Do you enjoy listening to audio books?  Have you recently blogged about this topic?  Leave me a comment and let me know!

Now most of my children are adults and on their own, and we don't read storybooks aloud to each other much anymore, but we do all read.  One thing we do try to do each is evening is gather together with whomever is home read aloud from The Book of Mormon. 

One of the first stories in The Book of Mormon  takes place 600 years before Christ. It tells of the prophet Lehi being warned by the Lord to take his family from their home in Jerusalem into the wilderness because  wicked men desired to take away his life, and Jerusalem was to be destroyed.  Lehi was then commanded by the Lord to send his sons back to Jerusalem for a set of records containing the history and the genealogy of their people.  Lehi's sons had some harrowing adventures before they returned with the records, but they were successful in their quest:

And we had obtained the records which the Lord had commanded us, and searched them and found that they were desirable; yea even of great worth unto us, insomuch that we could preserve the commandments of the Lord unto our children.  Wherefore, it was wisdom in the Lord that we should carry them with us, as we journeyed in the wilderness towards the land of promise. 

1 Nephi 5:21&22 (pg 11)

 Lehi and his family knew firsthand the importance of having history and scripture to teach their children.  Almost 500 years later, one of Lehi's decendants, King Benjamin also recognized the importance of the records:

For it were not possible that our father, Lehi, could have remembered all these things, to have taught them to his children, except it were for the help of these plates; for he having been taught in the language of the Egyptians therefore he could read these engravings, and teach them to his children, that thereby they could teach them to their children, and so fulfilling the commandments of God, even down to this present time.

Mosiah 1:4  (pg 145)

I'm grateful for good books.  I'm grateful for language.  And I'm grateful for books of scripture, including The Book of Mormon, that teach us of our Savior Jesus Christ and the things that will be of most worth to ourselves and our families.

You can read the story of Lehi's family from The Book of Mormon  here. You can learn more about  The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ at The Official Book of Mormon website.  If you would like to read from other bloggers who love The Book of Mormon, just click on The Book of Mormon Forum link on the top right of this blog. 



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