Jim Trelease Quotes.
Amid the push to excellence, with its measurement and accountability, it is easy to lose sight of a key ingredient in reading a book – the pleasure it bring us, something too many boil down to a dirty word: FUN.
Like Scout and her father in To Kill a Mockingbird, my father would pull me onto his lap each night in our four-room apartment and read aloud.
You became a reader because you saw and heard someone you admired enjoying the experience, someone led you to the world of books even before you could read, let you taste the magic of stories, took you to the library, and allowed you to stay up later at night to read in bed.
Every time we read to a child, we’re sending a ‘pleasure’ message to the child’s brain. You could even call it a commercial, conditioning the child to associate books and print with pleasure.
The prime purpose of being four is to enjoy being four – of secondary importance is to prepare for being five.
Students who read the most also read the best, achieve the most, and stay in school the longest. Conversely, those who dont read much cannot get better at it.
Readers don’t grow in trees. But they are grown-in places where they are fertilized with lots of print, and above all, read to daily.
If you don’t read much, you really don’t know much. You’re dangerous.
What we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we make them learn.
The more you read, the better you get, the more better you get, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it.
Imagine what our culture would be like if Americans sold ideas, words, and books with the same creativity we use to sell designer jeans, shampoo, and rock stars. Why, we might end up with people whos attention span for the printed word is longer than the time it takes to read a T-shirt.
Each day millions of children arrive in American classrooms in search of more than reading and math skills. They are looking for a light in the darkness of their lives, a Good Samaritan who will stop and bandage a bruised heart or ego.
