ANY

CHILD
CAN
READ
BETTER
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 ANY
CHILD
CAN
READ
BETTER
H A R V E Y S. W I E N E R

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW YORK OXFORD
 Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
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and associated companies in

Berlin Ibadan

Copyright © 1990, 1996 by Harvey S. Wiener, Ph.D.

First published in 1990 by Bantam Books,
666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103

Revised edition first published in paperback by Oxford University

Press, 1996, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other-
wise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wiener, Harvey S.
Any child can read better : developing your child's reading
skills outside the classroom / Harvey S. Wiener. — Rev. ed.
p. cm.
Includes index,
ISBN 0-19-510218-5 (pbk.)
1. Reading—Parent participation. 2. Reading (Elementary)
I. Title.
LB1050.W437 1996
649'.58—dc2 95-33331

2 4 6 8 10 975 31
Printed in the United States of America
 TEXT CREDITS
THE AMERICAN HERITAGE FIRST DICTIONARY, Copyright © 1986,
Houghton Mifflin Company. Reprinted by permission from The
American Heritage First Dictionary.
Jeannette Bruce, excerpt from JUDO: A GENTLE BEGINNING by Jean-
nette Bruce. Copyright © 1975 by Jeannette Bruce. Reprinted by per-
mission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
Robert Frost, from "Bereft," from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST
edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1928, © 1969 by Holt,
Rinehart and Winston. Copyright © 1956 by Robert Frost. Reprinted
by permission of Henry Holt and Co., Inc.
Merwyn S. Garbarino and Rachel R. Sandy from PEOPLE AND CUL-
TURES, Copyright © 1975, Houghton Mifflin Company.
Arthur Getis and Judith M. Getis, from GEOGRAPHY, Copyright ©
1985, Houghton Mifflin Company.
James Howe from MORGAN'S Zoo. Reprinted with the permission of
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schus-
ter Children's Publishing Division, from MORGAN'S Zoo by James
Howe. Copyright © 1984 James Howe.
Langston Hughes, from "Dream Deferred," Copyright © 1951 by
Langston Hughes. Reprinted from THE PANTHER AND THE LASH by
Langston Hughes, by permission of Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
John Jarolimek and Ruth Pelz. Text and illustrations reproduced
with permission of Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing Com-
pany from COMMUNITIES, PEOPLE, AND PLACES, GR. 3, Copyright ©
1985.
Philip Larkin from "Toads Revisited," THE WHITSON WEDDINGS, Copy-
right © 1964, Faber and Faber, Ltd.
MACMILLAN ENGLISH. Illustrations and text reprinted by permission of
Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing Company from MACMIL-
LAN ENGLISH, Copyright © 1984.
Michael Ondaatje from "Letters and Other Worlds" in RAT JELLY.
Coach House Press, 1973, Copyright © Michael Ondaatje.
Glen Rounds, "The Blind Colt." Copyright 1941, 1960 by Holiday
House, Inc., Copyright © renewed 1969 by Glen Rounds. Reprinted
from THE BLIND COLT by permission of Holiday House.
"Sacagawea" from THE WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA, Copyright ©
1990, World Book, Inc. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
SCIENCE FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW, illustration and text reprinted by
permission of D. C. Heath & Co.
SILVER BURDETT ENGLISH 5, Copyright © 1985 Silver Burdett Com-
pany. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Jill Marie Warner, "Independent Strategies," THE READING TEACHER
46(8), May 1993, p. 710.

ART CREDITS
Page 66. Photographer/TAURUS PHOTOS, INC.
Pages 85, 171. Susan Saunders, from MYSTERY CAT AND THE MONKEY
BUSINESS by Susan Saunders, published by Bantam-Skylark Books,
illustrations by Eileen Christelow.
Page 119. Courtesy of Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illi-
nois.
Page 123. Copyright USA TODAY, Reprinted with permission.
Page 150. Photo by Jean-Claude/LeJeune.
Page 152. Reprinted by permission of United Media. © 1983 NEA,
Inc.
Page 154. Reprinted by permission HIGHLIGHTS FOR CHILDREN, INC.,
Columbus, Ohio, Copyright © 1988.
Page 155. Courtesy Alon Reininger/Leo de Wys, Inc.
Pages 173-75. Courtesy ARCHIE COMIC PUBLICATIONS, Inc., Columbus,
Ohio, Copyright © 1988, 1990.
Page 155. Courtesy Alon Reininger/Leo de Wys, Inc.
Page 183. Courtesy Douglas Faulkner and Photo Researchers.
The end, at last, to the mystery-
I learned to read
When you read with me
When
you
read with me.

For
Blanche Koster Gold
We miss you, Mom
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 Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

Introduction: 3
YOUR CHILD CAN READ BETTER WITH YOUR HELP

Mining Word Meanings 11

Words, The Magic Kingdom 43

Reading Warm-Upsv 59

"Just the Facts, Ma'am": 78

READING FOR INFORMATION
x CONTENTS

Words and Pictures: 111

USING VISUAL AIDS

The Reading-Writing Connection 130

Finding Secrets: 144

INFERENCE

The Crystal Ball: 167

PREDICTING OUTCOMES AND DRAWING CONCLUSIONS

Faraway Views: 194

GENERALIZING

Moms and Dads as Reading Helpers: 219

GOOD BOOKS THROUGH THE GRADES

INDEX 271
 Acknowledgments

I am blessed with loyal family and friends who support

my work spiritually and intellectually, and I want to
thank them lovingly for their efforts.
Thank you, Barbara Wiener, for teaching me so
much about beginning readers and how to reach them
through print. Thanks, too, for listening and for answer-
ing all my questions with your usual sensitivity and for
helping me make this a better book. Thank you, Melissa
Wiener, now a wonderful teacher yourself of second-
graders in Pleasantville, New York, for keeping me up-
to-date on new ideas in teaching reading.
Thank you, Joseph Wiener and Saul Wiener, for let-
ting me test out my ideas on you and for allowing me to
share your private thoughts with people you don't know.
Saul, thanks for your terrific drawings and your keen
insights.
Thank you, Rosalie Bean, Kit, across the country in
Seattle, for being a loving, sensitive librarian and for
helping me identify just which books make kids happy.
Thanks too for your excellent summaries and sugges-
tions for book talk.
Thank you, Janet Lieberman, for showing me a
schema for teaching reading. You helped me find order
in a chaotic universe. You deserved the Dana Award you
received.
Thank you, Chuck Bazerman, for working with me
over the years to develop some of my ideas for begin-
ning readers.
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you, Nora Eisenberg and Karen Greenberg,

mothers and first-rate scholars of language, for looking
at previous versions of Any Child Can Read Better and
for tender, indispensable advice about it.
Thank you, Dee Shedd and Sheila Byers, for your
long hours working with me on the manuscript in its
sundry forms. How could I get by without you?
 ANY
CHILD
CAN
READ
BETTER
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 1

Introduction
YOUR CHILD CAN READ BETTER
WITH YOUR HELP

The Home Reading Option

Todays parents have a lively interest in. assisting their
children as learners, and this interest has spawned a
plethora of books on home reading programs. It's nat-
ural to raise this question, then: why yet another book
for helping children read at home? Surely the bookstore
and library shelves are groaning with volumes that can
help you create a "home schoolroom," enough to pro-
duce a nation of advanced readers. Why yet another
book?
For good reasons, believe me.
Obviously, most parents want o help their hild n
learn. A couple of years ago, Professor Joyce Epstei at
Johns Hopkins surveyed the parents of more than 250
Baltimore children. Her findings, reported in The New
York Times, showed that kids had higher reading scores
if parents supported their youngsters' efforts at home.
What's even more interesting is that although mothers

3
4 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

and fathers wanted to involve themselves actively in

their children's learning, very few knew just what to do.
A shocking eighty per cent reported that they didn't have
a clue about where to begin in helping their children
succeed in school. With this apparent insecurity, many
moms and dads are reaching for books in an effort to
learn what they don't know. Hence, all the how-to-help-
your-child read productions..
However, unlike Any Child Can Read Better, most
"home learning" books address parents of toddlers and
preschoolers and attempt to create a race of superkids
who can read almost before they can walk. Teach-your-
child-to-read books concentrate on turning the home
nursery into a classroom—reading drills with flash
cards, oversized words pinned as labels on familiar
objects, interminable sessions on alphabet skills, pho-
netics, sight vocabulary, and sounding-out words. Too
many books for parents of young learners have turned
on the pressure and have turned off the pleasure for
mothers and fathers as guiders and shapers of learning
experiences.
Moms and dads are not drill sergeants. Home isn't
boot camp.
If you're the mother or father of a preschooler,
unless you're home learning parents who won't send
your children to school in any case, don't teach your son
or daughter how to read. Leave that job for preschool
classrooms, kindergartens, and the primary grades.
Sure, create a home environment in which words are
important, in which reading is cherished, in which pen-
cil and paper are available and fun to use. Read to and
with your child whenever you can; talk with your child
about words and books—about anything. I've laid out
my position on these issues in other books, particularly
Any Child Can Write (revised edition, Oxford, 1990), and
Talk with Your Child (Viking, 1988).
 INTRODUCTION 5

Why shouldn't you teach your baby to read? First,

the job is tough to do properly. Teachers and scholars
give their lives to instructing children in the mechanics
of reading: how to use the alphabet, how to say letters
alone and in combinations, how to pronounce words,
how to distill meaning from print. No matter how dedi-
cated you are, it's difficult to achieve in your living room
what teachers try to achieve throughout the grades.
Home learning moms and dads, who for philosophical,
religious, and social reasons provide all instruction at
home, really have their work cut out for them!
Second, if you become more of your child's teacher,
you risk being less of a parent, and you can strain the
already delicate relations in a household. It's awfully
tough to make your child feel that you love him when
you're seething with impatience at his restlessness, at
his off-and-on attitude toward books, at his stubborn
refusal to sound out a word some days. Simply living
with our families can create pressures; burdening often
fragile home environments with classroom tactics can
make everyone miserable.
I'm not denying that innumerable opportunities exist
for teaching and learning at home. In my books I advo-
cate and endorse the contributions moms and dads can
make to learning. Yet you must remember that your pri-
mary role in your child's life is as a loving parent, not as
a teacher of school skills. Being a parent and a subject
skills teacher for your own child is like oil and water:
they don't mix even under very good conditions.
The third and most important reason to resist teach-
ing your child the rudiments of reading is that she's
probably going to learn them pretty well without your
help. Why waste your energies here when you could be
stimulating more productive learning? She'll get the let-
ter combinations and the alphabet; she'll learn useful
sight vocabulary; she'll read successfully on a basic level.
6 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

As I've suggested, what many parents try to do at home,

teachers do pretty well in the formal classroom setting.
Besides, little scientific data support the claim that
kids who learn to read at a very young age are, in the
long run, any better off than their later-learning peers.
Youngsters level off: by the time they reach the third
grade, those who learned to read early, before experienc-
ing school, and those who learned only through class-
room instruction, are very much in the same ball park.
Here from David Elkind, Professor of Child Study at
Tufts University, and a leading authority on young peo-
ple's learning, is food for thought on teaching school
subjects to kids at home. Elkind is shocked at how
teachers, parents, administrators, and legislators are
developing for infants and young children the kinds of
educational programs aimed quite specifically at school-
age youngsters. "When we instruct children in academic
subjects at too early an age," he says in his landmark
book Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk, "we miseducate
them; we put them at risk for short-term stress and
long-term personality damage for no useful purpose.
There is no evidence that such early instruction has last-
ing benefits, and considerable evidence that it can do
lasting harm."
In light of all these observations, let me repeat the
question I posed earlier: Why yet another reading book?
When elementary school teachers across the grades
complain that youngsters don't know how to read, they
don't mean that children cannot decode words or
unpuzzle basic syntax. Rather, they mean that children
cannot extract vital meanings, cannot generalize, clas-
sify, predict outcomes, decipher figurative expressions—
in short, cannot perform the kinds of intellectual tasks
that mark the critical reader.
That's where you come in. And that's why I've writ-
ten this book for you. Very few among the countless
 INTRODUCTION 7

how-to-help-your-child-read-and-learn books i lli-

gently address the parents of school-age children who
are trying to make their way through the maze of
assignments and exercises related to classroom reading.
I've written this book to help you help your child as she's
learning and practicing reading at school where your
efforts can supplement daily academic instruction. You
won't find any information here on how to teach alpha-
bet sounds and phonics for the very young. You will find
information about assisting your child as she reads a
classroom textbook or some other class assignment.
That's one reason for Any Child Can Read Better.
Another is that children of the many young families
of the mid-eighties are now growing up. Yesterdays tod-
dlers and preschoolers now are filling the primary-grade
classrooms of America. What you might have learned
from other books about helping preschoolers will not
stretch far enough as your son or daughter advances
through the grades. Still, if you are a parent of one of
these grade-school youngsters, you're probably no less
anxious today about your child's success than you were
when he or she attended nursery school, day care pro-
grams, or courses at the museum, the music center, or
the sports academy. If at this moment you're a parent of
an infant or a toddler, it won't be long before you're
looking for ways to help her with her school learning.
As a parent, you need a book on how to help your
maturing child survive as a reader in school and out.
Learning to read well and for different purposes is an
ongoing, organic process. Every page your child reads
provides an opportunity to sharpen reading skills, and
kids need help in extracting the most possible meaning
from print. To complicate matters, once kids have to
spend six hours a day at a classroom desk, teachers start
piling on homework. Very often the assignments involve
language activities, vocabulary building, and reading
8 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

comprehension. These home activities regularly mystify

children. "Reading" homework—especially when the
disciplines expand to such areas as science and social
studies—invariably draws parents into its web when
kids wonder aloud: How do I do this? What does the
teacher want? What does this mean?
I want to restate an important point I made earlier.
Many of today's elementary school youngsters have mas-
tered the rudiments of reading. By that I mean that they
know how to recognize basic words, and they know the
phonetic and syntactical rules for identifying many
unfamiliar words. Those who do not know how to
"decode" when they enter kindergarten or first grade
generally learn the skill in a reasonable amount of time.
That is, they meet the goals set by the school for reading
progress.
Once kids know the basics of reading, a teacher's
work really begins. Yet, try as they may, teachers cannot
provide the guidance and stimulation that will advance
every child's reading excellence. Classes are too large.
Too much content in too many disciplines veers classes
off the reading track. Kids' learning experiences vary so
widely that typical front-of-class teaching can put off
many youngsters. Thus, you, the parent, serve a valuable
role as reading support agent, and your home and sur-
rounding community, even more than the school, serve
as reading laboratories for advancing skills.

Building Home Reading

This book will show you how to make your child a criti-
cal reader in school, at home, and in the society at large.
As I've said, this is not a how-to-teach-your-child-to-read
book. Too many of these painfully prescriptive volumes
already strain our bookshelves. I intend to help you,
concerned mothers and fathers, move to the next stage
 INTRODUCTION 9

of your child's intellectual development, in which your

home or the preschool setting is not the primary learn-
ing environment.
I offer here practical steps for forming essential
skills. I'm building on almost thirty years' experience as
a teacher of reading and writing from elementary school
through college and as a parent for eighteen years.
Three lively, inquisitive kids helped me understand the
needs of learners at home, as my kids' teachers gave for-
mal classroom instruction, hewing to required hours
and mandated curriculum.
I have identified for you the skills that I believe con-
tribute most to critical reading and have organized the
chapters of Any Child Can Read Better according to those
skills. Thus, I'll give you a brief overview of some basic
strategy that a novice reader must master; and then I
will show you how to use home conversation and
relaxed questioning to lead your child to gain command
of the essential skills. I'll also show you some typical
reading materials that children are likely to bring home
in elementary school, and I'll show you how to direct
your child's attention to a text's core meaning.
As I point out the necessary skills, I'll draw regularly
on the nonverbal world, the world of pictures, signs,
advertisements, and supermarket products to assert the
potential and power of visual literacy in helping your
child master reading. Knowing how your youngster
applies an important skill in nonlinear print settings
makes your role as reading coach much easier than you
might have thought. By connecting those skills with a
book's demands, you can use creative, relaxed discus-
sion to draw meanings out of print material. By talking
with your child about school-based home readings, you
can tease out the careful, intelligent exploration that
teachers expect from their pupils but have little opportu-
nity to nurture.
10 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

If you have a school-age child at home, I'll bet you've

been wondering about what you can do to help your
child learn. What, for example, do you do when your
first grader brings home a worksheet on word families,
when your second grader brings home a photocopied
story with questions, when your fifth-grader brings
home a science book with a reading assignment to com-
plete by the next morning? How can you help your son
or daughter understand the words and ideas and to
build on them to advance thought and comprehension?
What books can you steer your child toward as interest
in reading expands? How can you talk about key books
at home in order to heighten both your child's compe-
tence as a reader and his or her love for the printed
page?
If you're a parent who wants to see her child succeed
in today's classroom, Any Child Can Read Better will help
you answer those questions. It will help you continue to
influence your child's learning without increasing stress
or anxiety in the home. I do not believe in high-pres-
sured teaching. I do not believe in transforming parents
into professors. With comfortable conversation and
enjoyable exercises that tap children's native abilities,
you can help your child practice the critical thinking
and reading skills that guarantee success in the class-
room and beyond.
Let's have fun. And what better place to begin than
with words, the currency of our language and reading
kingdom?
 2
Mining Word Meanings

Quick now, what's your knee-jerk advice when your

child is reading and he asks you the definition of a
tough word he can't figure out?
"Look it up in a dictionary," right?
It's bad advice. It's particularly bad advice for devel-
oping readers struggling through a thorny selection and
trying to make sense of it.
Don't get me wrong—I have nothing against dictio-
naries. I love dictionaries. They are indispensable lan-
guage-learning, language-checking tools. Writers, always
aiming for precision amid perplexing word choices,
could not survive long without dictionaries. For readers,
too, dictionaries are important, but not in the ways we
typically advise children to use them.
Certainly, researchers and very sophisticated readers
do use dictionaries as side-by-side companions to books.
Watch a thoughtful poetry student reading something by
Milton or Housman or Browning and you'll see regular
expeditions into a dictionary to check nuances and alter-
native meanings. For the most part, though, established
readers will use a dictionary to check an unfamiliar

11
12 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

word after they read a selection and can't figure out the
word's meaning.
Unfortunately, most classroom dictionary work
focuses on having kids look up lists of words. Most
often, those words are not connected to any reading
exercise; and without a context for word exploration, the
activity is an utter waste of time. When the words do
relate to content, children are asked to look up the lists
of words before reading. Sure, knowing definitions of
potentially difficult words can remove some obstacles to
comprehension, and I support telling youngsters in
advance what a few really difficult or technical key
words mean—words whose definitions cannot easily be
derived from the context (more on this later) but whose
meanings are essential for understanding. Still, you
don't want your child slaving over a list of tough words,
looking them up and writing definitions, as a necessary
precursor to a reading activity. He'll be bored and
exhausted by the time he starts the first sentence!
In fact, most of us don't often take the advice we give
freely to our children. When was the last time that you
looked up words prior to reading? When was the last
time you stopped reading a novel or an article—just
closed the book or the newspaper—to look up a word
that puzzled you? I'm willing to bet that you can't
remember. In fact, odds are you don't use a dictionary
much to check uncommon words that pop up as you
read.
And for good reason. You don't want to stop reading
because you risk losing your own train of thought as
well as the writer's. If you're engrossed in a good book,
you don't want to interrupt your pleasure to hunt mean-
ings in a dictionary. And often a hunt it really is—check-
ing guide words, figuring out alphabetical placements,
reading numbered definitions, testing a few out in the
sentence containing the unfamiliar word. Although most
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 13

of us can survive occasional sidetracking steps like these

with just minor annoyance and can reenter our reading
relatively unblemished, youngsters are enormously
taxed by the process. It's so difficult for them to return
to their text after they've taken a dictionary detour.
Stop telling your child to use a dictionary if he asks
about an unfamiliar word. Instead, show him how to
use one of the strategies you really do use for determin-
ing meanings when you meet an unfamiliar word.
In this chapter, I want to uncover some of those
strategies. By now, you are using them almost instinc-
tively and probably have not brought them to conscious
awareness. I also want to explore realistic ways to help
your sons and daughters learn and use new vocabulary
to sharpen their reading skills.

Learning Words from the Beginning

Let's first go back to your child's preprint word learning
for a moment. You should know that your youngster
starts to accumulate vocabulary from the earliest
moments of wake fulness in the crib. You determine
your baby's meaning by interpreting and explaining the
sounds she makes. As your infant grows in years, you
probably engage in what speech experts call self-talk,
where you describe what you're doing as you're doing it;
and parallel-talk, where you describe action by action
what your child is doing. You enhance your child's word
knowledge by bringing linguistic meaning to the dis-
parate sensory experiences surrounding him.
Regular sustained conversation with children even
as young as six weeks starts the all-important process of
language socialization—but it also begins the lifelong
lesson of learning words and what they mean. Thus,
talking with your child regularly and listening to her
share thoughts, ideas, and impressions lay the corner-
14 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

stone for the vocabulary storehouse that a healthy

learner builds and develops straight into adulthood.
Another influence on word knowledge is the reading
you do with your child as she grows. Another is your
child's independent reading of books at home and in the
library. Here, too, we're talking about the earliest stages
of contact with print as well as the later, more sustained
contact with books.
Even your supermarket shopping excursions with
your baby sitting in the grocery cart is a word-building
exercise as you drift up and down the aisles reading
signs of sale items and labels from cans and boxes on
the shelves. "Yes, those are the cookies that are on sale.
See the sign?"—here you're pointing to the letters that
make the word cookies. "And this word, SALE. Let's pick
out the Hydroxes from all the others on the shelf." Your
baby is reading when she pulls that box of cookies into
her lap. She may be using only the visual clues—familiar
colors or packaging, even graphic print layouts—with-
out really reading the letters to make out the words
Hydrox or Oreos. But she is reading nonetheless, and
your encouragement in these informal settings go fur-
ther than any drill exercises designed to teach words
and their meanings.
The sooner that books enter your child's life, the
sooner you direct her down the road to advanced word
knowledge.
The all-picture, no-word cloth books in the nursery
contribute to vocabulary growth as you and your baby
construct stories from the illustrations, pointing to a
truck or a rose or a blue jay, for example, and naming it.
When you pore over a newspaper or magazine with your
son or daughter in your lap and together identify what
you see in the photographs and drawings, you are estab-
lishing the vital connection between print and meaning.
Families that emphasize reading's joy and value
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 15

from infancy onward are families that send youngsters

to school ready to learn from their teachers the all-
important decoding strategies—that is, the basic techni-
cal skills for making meaning from print. As I've stated
before, these include being able to recognize the letters
as well as knowing the sounds made by letters individu-
ally and in groups, and the words produced when
sounds are strung together. The skills also include know-
ing the object or idea that the sound clusters refer to.
Regarding this last point, of course, the more experi-
ences you can expose your child to, the easier it will be
for her to connect a word with its referent. A child who
had never seen a blimp might be able to read the word
with ease, but she might not have the slightest notion of
what the object being signified by the letters was.
My point in reviewing some of these principles of
language growth is once again to assure you that most
children—yours included, certainly—have the basic
equipment to learn reading mechanics. It's the rare child
who does not enter school with sufficient command of
words for describing and explaining her immediate
world and her inner imaginings. And I'll bet that your
child's vocabulary is strong enough to help her read the
primers and other available reading materials, no mat-
ter what instructional method her classroom teacher
uses. Those of you teaching your children at home will
find the same issues true with your youngsters. Despite
its apparent complexity as an intellectual and concep-
tual task, learning to read in its early manifestations is
not an overwhelming problem for most young children.

Getting Unhooked on Phonics

No doubt you've seen and heard the incredible assertions
for Hooked on Phonics, a home reading program that
claims to teach your child to read in record time through
16 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

a series of audiotapes and print short stories. For

$229.95, promotional materials state, your child learns
the ABC's and moves to phonics to learn reading—all this
to musical accompaniment that will hold your young-
ster's attention. He practices by reading 100 brief fic-
tional works and answering multiple choice questions
about the readings. Sales for Hooked on Phonics have
reached extraordinary heights; and, if your community
library is like mine, it has weeks of backlogged reserve
orders on the program for home borrowing.
Wait. Before you write a check for the miracle snake
oil, let's have a look at the complaints about Hooked on
Phonics. In the first place, the company's claims are extrav-
agant and apparently unjustified, at least as far as the law
is concerned. The ads have said that the program can
quickly and easily teach those with reading prob
lems or disabilities to read, regardless of the
problem, and will enable those users to improve
significantly their reading levels and classroom
grades; that the program can teach those with
dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, and other
learning disabilities to read; that the program
can teach reading in a home setting without a
teacher or tutor; that the program effectively
teaches reading comprehension skills; and that
the program has helped nearly one million stu-
dents to learn at home.
Would you buy such unrestrained allegations? Well,
the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) didn't. In Decem-
ber 1994, the FTC reached a settlement with Gateway
Educational Products Ltd., distributor of the materi-
als—no more misleading claims about educational
profit for kids unless Gateway "can substantiate the
claims with competent and reliable evidence." As I write
this, no convincing evidence has yet emerged.'
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 17

A number of teacher organization representatives

and other experts testified at FTC hearings against
Hooked on Phonics, arguing—and I believe in this point
deeply—that although learning letter combinations and
the sounds they make may be an important reading skill,
they are simply insufficient to serve as the main building
blocks for teaching youngsters the complex task of read-
ing. As I've indicated before, why waste your time (and
money) teaching your child the rudimentary skills that
she'll probably pick up anyway without your help? The
last thing a parent should do is concentrate on letter
sounds and phonics at home! You have much more
important work to accomplish if you truly wish to help
your child succeed as a reader. Read to and with your
child. Talk about books and pictures. Allow freewheeling
conversations about print to fill your home discussions.
But don't become one of Elkind's "miseducators"!
Many enlightened reading teachers abhor the phon-
ics-first approach—not because they see the skill as
inconsequential but because they see it as only a tiny
sapling in the reading arbor. Phonics is not mysterious
(this letter says this, these letters say that), is relatively
simple to teach and test, and is easily understood by
ordinary people in the way many other reading maneu-
vers are not. Therefore, the leafy and prodigious phonics
tree easily can overshadow other key strategies in the
reading forest, strategies much more complex in leading
a child to the essential skill, comprehension. Kids don't
have to know how to sound out every word in a sentence
and paragraph to know what the word means. And just
because a child can say correctly every word in a sen-
tence or paragraph is no assurance that he understands
what he has read.
The latest in a long line of theories about children
and how they best learn to read is the "whole language"
approach, now extremely popular in the schools and
18 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

largely responsible for the general antagonism to what

critics see as an atomistic, phonics-based, basal-reader
approach to reading instruction. (In the 1950s Rudolph
Flesch's Why Johnny Can't Read blasted the then-current
reading philosophy—the "meaning-first" approach,
which also warred with phonics—and led to a resur-
gence in phonics instruction. Ah, well.) Trying to avoid
what they see as murdering kids' interest in reading and
to use "literature"—interesting stories and poems
instead of canned stuff prepared for primers—as well as
regular practice in writing and lots of discussion and
read-alongs, whole language teachers believe that a
print-rich atmosphere builds necessary skills only when
a child explores whole texts. Resolute whole language
teachers eschew instruction in phonics and word recog-
nition; these skills are learned anyway, the teachers
believe, as actual reading ensues. By helping children
build meaning from an entire text, whole language
teachers discourage accuracy of word-by-word sound-
ing-out exercises and allow children to proceed at their
own speed. Skill and drill are out; natural learning is in.
Don't think whole language is without its critics,
however. In a recent article in The Atlantic Monthly, "The
Great Debate Revisited," Art Levine traces the war
between the "meaning-first" and the "phonics-first"
advocates and highlights the position that despite the
wide acceptance of whole language tenets among teach-
ers and schools of education, "research and experience
not only fail to demonstrate its superiority but also
make a persuasive case for the importance of phonics."
Many whole language adherents reject the conventional
methods of judging success in reading as misleading
and irrelevant; meaning-first supporters argue that read-
ing tests and controlled studies are narrow, unhelpful in
telling what children actually do when they read, and a
reflection of an outdated paradigm of educational
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 19

beliefs. Some people argue further that phonics is com-

pletely irrelevant and that the need for methodical
instruction in phonics is a myth.
As in many educational debates, the arguments
become reductive because of the passions of the
arguers. Good sense rarely prevails when, having chosen
sides, hostile camps meet on the educational battlefield.
But some educators do see the point. Kids are so varied
in their demands as readers and so impossible to fit into
theories that a mix of approaches, based on each child's
needs, always seems to make the most sense.
Some academics criticize this belief, particularly
Professor Kenneth Goodman, a renowned reading edu-
cator and proponent of whole language at the University
of Arizona, whom you'll hear about later in our discus-
sion of context and "miscues" in reading. Goodman
believes that an eclectic use-what-works approach is stu-
pid: "We're not going to solve anything by trying a little
of this and a little of that." But consistency of theory and
pedagogy is less important to me than meeting the par-
ticular learning demands each child brings to the read-
ing environment.
I believe passionately that a phonics-first approach
is wrong and is torture for most children aching to read.
Surround your child with print and, more than any
other strategy, you'll help her move quickly down the
road to reading success. Stay away from Hooked on
Phonics because through meaningless alphabet drill and
word sounds you risk turning your youngster away from
the joys of reading forever. However, as many school dis-
tricts and programs now advocate, a skillful blend of
whole language exercises and activities and discerning
phonics instruction shows much promise.
Unless you're a home-learning parent, continue to
avoid formal reading instruction at home. Keep the
flame of reading alive for your preschoolers and early-
20 ANY C D CAN READ BETTER

grade youngsters by reading together and talking about

print wherever you can.
Home-learning folks, use your common sense.
Establish a rewarding home program that draws first on
actual reading experiences from lively and challenging
books. Expect your child to pick up phonics and other
skills as she reads and writes, trusting her skills at nat-
ural learning. Avoid targeting one word at a time for
sound and meaning focus; help your child use surround-
ing words and sentences for educated guesses. It's all
right for a child NOT to know what every individual
word means as long as he can grasp the idea from con-
text. (We'll look at context in more detail later in this
chapter.) But since phonics is part of reading—"just one
part of the reading process," cautions Karen Smith,
Executive Director of the National Council of Teachers
of English (NCTE)—be prepared, when necessary, to
help with word recognition through alphabet sounds.

Context Leads the Way

When reading materials grow more difficult and when
content-based reading matter—a social studies book,
the science section of the weekly reader, a mystery novel
from the library—enters your child's life, print makes
more challenging linguistic demands. It's obvious that
your child needs to know more and more words if she's
going to respond successfully to the various adventures
that a growing young reader faces each time she turns
to print.
We use the term context to indicate the power of sur-
rounding words and sentences to inform the meaning of
a single word or set of words. In this section we'll exam-
ine the range of contextual clues readers rely on to derive
meaning. Context clues are the most frequently used
tools to help determine an unknown word's definition.
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 21

But before you start focusing on the meanings of

single words your child may not know on a page,
remember that it's possible to gather the meaning of a
whole print entity without knowing exactly what each
piece means precisely. In reading, the whole is always
greater than the sum of the parts.
Important research by Professors Kenneth and Yetta
Goodman of Arizona State suggests that even if your
child is somewhat off the mark in guessing an unknown
word's definition, the contextual imperative, if he uses it,
can help him understand the sentence anyway. A wrong
definition for a word will not eclipse meaning totally. All
other things being equal—the difficulty level of materi-
als, your child's interest in the content, the physical set-
ting in which the reading takes place—even if your child
takes a miscue from the print environment, he still can
construct meaning from what he's read in order to make
sense. Thus, knowing the exact definition of every word
in every paragraph is not essential.
The trick is to learn how to use available information
to determine meaning even when some of the words
stump you. What's most compelling about applications
of the Goodmans' work is that primary school kids can
learn not to labor over every difficult word they see. If
you've ever watched a below-grade-level reader strug-
gling to decipher each word in a sentence as she reads,
you'll know how unproductive that process can be.
Instead, we want to encourage young readers to use the
total print environment—surrounding words, sentences,
and paragraphs; pictures, drawings, and illustrations;
captions, charts, and typography—whatever features on
a page that are available as aids to meaning. More on
this later.
As a well-practiced reader, you know by now that
w ds have multiple meanings. You can't count on a
dictionary to tell you a definition easily each time you
22 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

have doubts, because one word can mean many differ-

ent things, depending on how the writer uses t in a
sentence.
Here, I want to consider the fairly obvious notion
that if one word has a variety of meanings, you can't tell
which meaning is appropriate unless you ground the
word in its surrounding environment.
As an example, consider the word ground, the verb
in the final clause of the last sentence above. What
would you say if your child asked you what it meant? If
you're like most parents, without much thought you'd
probably respond with the most familiar definition—
"Ground? Oh, that's the earth, you know, the solid sur-
face on top." But I'll bet that the definition would get
you into trouble—especially if it appeared in a sentence
like the one we're talking about.
Did you know that ground has almost thirty—that's
right, thirty—different meanings enumerated in a dictio-
nary? Without knowing which definition the writer
might have intended, you shouldn't even try to guess at
an answer to your child's question. You've got to know
what the context is. Let me show you some of the vari-
ous uses for the word ground.
• The submarine moved slowly along the ground.
• The farmer leveled the ground and then tilled it
for planting potatoes.
• Speak softly when you approach the Indian burial
grounds.
• His strange behavior gave us grounds for suspect-
ing that he stole Manny's wallet.
• I poured the coffee grounds down the sink.
• Father grounded the wire before plugging in the
old hair drier.
• He grounded his opinion in many years of
research by scientists all over the world.
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 23

• His eyesight was weak, and as a result the com-

pany grounded the pilot permanently.
• The batter grounded out to the shortstop.
• During our trip out west we covered lots of
ground.
Unless you had a clue about the intended meaning,
guessing at the word ground in the abstract makes no
sense. You need to consider the context. I've simplified
this presentation somewhat by building pretty clear
clues into the ten sentences containing the word ground,
but the print environment does not always create such
conditions. Often you have to consider information in
surrounding sentences, paragraphs, sometimes even
pages in order to know the writer's intended meaning.
In talking over the concept of multiple meanings,
consider the many words your child knows that have
more than one definition. Start with these; then ask your
son or daughter to expand the list by adding other famil-
iar words. (You might want to check these out in a dic-
tionary just so you yourself know the range of options.)
1. bear 6. black
2. floor 7. leaf
3. light 8. match
4. book 9. pin
5. free 10. ring
I believe that of all the tips you can give your child
about determining the meaning of an unfamiliar word,
the most important is: figure out what the word means
from the sentence it's in and the other sentences around it.
Of course, none of the work I mentioned before on
"miscue analysis," as the researchers call it, challenges
the importance and value of teaching children how to
make educated guesses at meaning for new words. Once
24 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

you acknowledge the power of context over meaning,

you can consider some strategies that most good readers
use to figure out what unfamiliar words mean from the
surrounding print environment. I think that you'll find
these columns useful as you investigate word meanings

How to Use Sentence Hints for Word Meanings

Hint Example Explanation
Some sentences set The principal— The pair of dashes
off the definition money he put in sets off the defini-
for a difficult word his savings account tion of principal,
by means of punc- to earn interest— here used to mean
tuation. was safe even "sum of money."
though the bank Other punctuation
was closed by the that may set off
police. meanings includes
commas, parenthe-
ses ( ), and brackets
[ ].
Sometimes helping Carlos looked dazed, Helping words:
words, along with that is, stunned, as that is, meaning,
punctuation, pro- if someone had such as, or, is
vide important shocked him with called.
clues. bad news or with a
heavy blow to the
head.

Some sentences tell During office hours The word but helps
the opposite of he looked very you understand
what a new word tense and anxious, that relaxed is the
means. From its but on weekends he opposite of tense. If
opposite, you can was quite relaxed. you know that
figure out the relaxed means "at
meaning of the ease," you can fig-
word. ure out that tense
means "tight" or "at
attention."
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 25

Hint Example Explanation

Sometimes you can Martha's husband You know that fam-

use your own expe- and mother died ily tragedy would
riences to figure within a month of fill a person with
out the definition each other, and she great sadness, the
of a word. cried often at her meaning of sorrows.
terrible sorrows.

Sentences before or The lovely wooden Anything dry, hard,

after a sentence tray had grown and easily cracked
containing a diffi- brittle. It was dry may be called brit-
cult word some- and hard and tle.
times explain the cracked easily.
meaning of the
word.

Some sentences are She wanted baked The second sen-

written just to give clams for her appe- tence defines the
the definitions of tizer. An appetizer word appetizer.
difficult words— is the first course of
words that readers a meal.
will need to know
in order to under-
stand what they are
reading.

Because some sen- Legumes, such as The sentence doesn't

tences give exam- string beans, lima say that legume is a
ples for a new beans, and green name for a group of
word, you can peas, are important vegetables with
build a definition. in your diet. pods, but you can
figure out some of
that meaning from
the examples.
Some sentences The mayor wanted You can tell from
use a word that you privacy because he the sentence clues
do know to help knew that being that privacy means
explain a word that alone would help "being alone."
you do not know. him solve his prob-
lems.
26 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

with your child. First, check yourself to see how to use

the different hints often embedded in sentences as aids
to meaning. Next, go over these illustrations to point out
some of the valuable techniques your sons and daugh-
ters can be using as they read.
You're well armed now to answer questions about
what words mean when your child presents you with an
unknown creature in a sentence! Draw on these varied
context clues to see if you can engage your youngster in
educated guesswork.
For starters, let's try out some strategies for using
context clues, by examining a selection from Mystery Cat
and the Monkey Business and the word in italics, reap-

(1) Kelly Ann and Sara watched from the

Darbys' as the silver ladder slid up into the maple
tree. (2) A fireman climbed up the ladder and dis-
appeared from sight among the leaves. (3) There
was a pitiful cry from M.C. (4) "The fireman has
pulled him off the branch," Kelly Ann explained
to Sara. (5) Then the fireman reappeared, backing
down the ladder.
Do you see how the whole paragraph helps your
child guess at the meaning of the word reappeared—
and gives you the tools for helping her make that guess
correctly? What does the context say about reappeared!
After saying the word in his mind, your child might
connect it with an experience that will help him supply
the meaning quickly. Perhaps you had used the word to
describe the family pet goldfish weaving through the
fish tank's ceramic castle; perhaps a magician at the
library used the word in one of his vanishing tricks; per-
haps a newscaster said that the governor reappeared
after a meeting behind closed doors and your child
watched as he showed up again on your television
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 27

screen. In any case, the sound of the word and its

echoes in personal experience are key elements in pro-
ducing meaning as a child reads words.
Using experience further for the Monkey Business
sentences, we know that when a person ascends a ladder
into a tree we may not be able to see him for all the
foliage. Sure enough, sentences one and two reflect that
experience. A child who didn't know what disappeared
meant could probably guess at the meaning from the
phrases at the end of sentence 2, "from sight among the
leaves." Your child would know by the end of sentence 2
that if she were part of this scene, she couldn't see the
fire fighter any longer. Your conversation could draw
out those conclusions.
Sentences 3 and 4 provide more narrative detail;
then, in sentence 5 we read about the fireman again,
this time "backing down the ladder." You could guide a
child who didn't know what reappeared meant to use
surrounding clues in the paragraph. These include the
actions in sentences 1 and 2, the last four words in sen-
tence 5, her own experience, and the fact that disap-
peared and reappeared are opposites.
See if your child can use context clues again in the
paragraph, this time to guess at the letters "M.C." What
do the letters refer to? Prompt your youngster with
questions.
Be alert for a connection with the popular abbrevia-
tion for Master of Ceremonies, "emcee." Here your
child's knowledge would not help her if she knew the
term "emcee" and tried to apply it in this sentence.
Praise her effort, of course; then start prompting her
with questions.
What could possibly be in a tree, giving off a pitiful
cry? The writer uses the word him, so that your child
should be able to guess that the object is a male animal
of some kind. Might it be a human baby, who certainly
28 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

could give off a sorrowful wail? Not likely—experience

convinces us that babies usually don't get into a tree's
high branches. Could it be an older boy child? Possible,
but not probable. A young boy who could make his ways
high up into a maple probably wouldn't need rescuing in
such a fashion. If your child recalled the name of the
book from which the excerpt came, she might have a
logical guess at the identity of M.C., a cat. Cats do get
stuck in trees, emit powerful cries, and submit to rescu-
ing by fire fighters.
Ready for another example? Let's go to a four para-
graph sequence in an article from The New York Times.
We're going to focus on the words plummeted and eradi-
cated here. These are not words found typically in an
eight- to eleven-year-old's vocabulary, but you can guide
your son or daughter to use context clues and come up
with appropriate meanings.
1. The elephant population in Africa has been halved
in the last ten years.
2. The African Wildlife Foundation, a conservation
group based in Kenya and in Washington, esti-
mates the numbers have plummeted from 1.3 mil-
lion to 750,000, with the largest population in
Zaire.
3. At the present rate of decline, the elephant will
disappear from the continent within 10 years,
according to an international conference held in
Nairobi last November and attended by African
and Western governments, including the United
States.
4. Kenya has upward of 20,000 elephants, with Tsavo
holding the largest concentration. (5) The ele-
phant has been all but eradicated in neighboring
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 29

Uganda, according to the East African Wildlife

Society.
6. But for the Kenyans, the slaughter of the ele-
phants is particularly alarming.
You can help your child determine the meaning of
plummeted by exploring the example in sentence 2, the
sentence in which the word appears. When numbers of
elephants go from over a million to 750,000 they drop
sharply, an excellent definition for plummet. Sentence 1
sets the framework for the total falloff: of the elephants
alive ten years ago only half remain alive today. If your
child has trouble attaching value to numbers in the mil-
lions and hundred thousands, don't fret. Clues lie else-
where. The next sentence, 3, similarly talks about
reduced numbers. Here's a perfect example of how
adjoining sentences contribute to shaping the context
for an unfamiliar word.
Now, your child might not offer "fell steeply" or
"plunged" straight off as the definition for plummeted,
but with your help in pointing out how to use context
clues, he very well could make sense from the unfamil-
iar word and its paragraph environment.
My nine-year-old son Saul produced "changed" as a
definition for plummeted when we talked about this
selection. As I probed for a more exact meaning, encour-
aging his use of context clues, he at first suggested that
the word meant "changed for a higher number." The 1.3
beside the 750,000 threw him off track; he thought that
the first number was smaller than the second. When you
see the word million and the absence of the word thou-
sand—only the place-holding zeroes provide the number
clue here—you can understand his difficulty. With all
those zeros the 750,000 does look much bigger than the
1.3. Saul had some trouble with those big numbers, not
realizing until he started explainin aloud that 1.3 mil-
30 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

lion (his saying the word aloud made all the difference!)
was in fact larger than 750,000. Plummeted, he then
explained, meant "changed by dropping lower."
You can use similar strategies in exploring
eradicated, a more difficult word to unpuzzle than plum-
meted. Our old friend disappear in sentence 3 continues
to focus our attention on the vanishing elephants. Sen-
tence 4 provides a count for one of the African regions
considered here. But eradicated does not release its
meaning easily in sentence 5. After the numbers pro-
vided in 4, you could say "saved" as a synonym for eradi-
cated. Kenya has twenty thousand elephants, a large
number remaining in one particular area of that coun-
try. With no knowledge of the word's denotation and
without an effort to look further for clues, a child could
propose that Uganda had saved many elephants.
What prevents such a reading? Again, the context. First,
the peculiar syntax "all but" implies a negative, perhaps
desperate, setting for the concept it introduces here. But
this is a subtle issue, and don't be surprised if your child
struggles with it. Saul and I had to spend some time with
the idea here. We examined other clues, noting the words
"rate of decline" and "disappear." The idea of slaughter in
sentence 6 also suggested features of the meaning. These
synonyms and experiential clues ultimately helped Saul
realize that eradicated meant "got rid of."
But the syntax of sentence 5 did throw him a curve.
At first he thought from "all but" that eradicated meant
that you had to have a little left and that those were then
being wiped out. It's a perfectly legitimate conclusion to
draw here, but the word's meaning itself does not neces-
sarily require that provision. With some easy conversa-
tion, we soon worked out the true definition. Even if we
hadn't, Saul would have gathered all he needed to deter-
mine the meaning of the passage, even without an exact
definition for the word in question.
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 31

Word Part Clues for Meaning

When thoughtful readers discover an unfamiliar word,
they can draw on a number of strategies—some individ-
ual, some overlapping—to produce meaning. We've
already looked at the power of context in producing
comprehension in the mind of a reader when a new
word appears. You've also seen how not knowing a
word's meaning does not necessarily impede under-
standing of a selection: You can make your way to the
end of a thought, grasping it fully without knowing
either the pronunciation or the definition of a strange
word—even misreading the word completely or substi-
tuting another word in its place.
Yet among the complex talents we bring to words in
our effort to extract their meaning is a set of techniques
that help us deal with individual words as we frame
them in contextual settings. Look again at our selection
from Saunders' Mystery Cat and the Monkey Business
and the word reappeared.
Kelly Ann and Sara watched from the Darbys'
as the silver ladder slid up into the maple tree. A
fireman climbed up the ladder and disappeared
from sight among the leaves. There was a pitiful
cry from M.C. "The fireman has pulled him off
the branch," Kelly Ann explained to Sara. Then
the fireman reappeared, backing down the ladder.
What will your child do to figure out the word reap-
peared if it's unfamiliar, if the context provides insuffi-
cient clues to meaning for him, and if he wants to know
what that word reappears means exactly?
If he has the skills to determine the sounds made by
the letter combinations, he'll probably try to say the
word in his mind, even aloud perhaps. Understand, this
task is fraught with complexity. For instance, the first
32 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

two letters here (re) must not be combined with the next
two (ap) following it. We say the first four letters (reap)
to rhyme with knee cap. Under ordinary circum-
stances—as if anything in reading is ordinary!—the e
and a beside each other signal a diphthong, meaning
that the first vowel in a two-vowel combination gets a
long sound and the second vowel is silent. If the letter
combination were simply reap with no letters after it,
you'd have to pronounce it to rhyme with sleep. (You can
see the diphthong rule at work if you glance at the next
side-by vowels—also ea—further on in the word reap-
peared. The ea in pear rhymes with fear, long sound (e)
for the e, silence for the a.)
And now to complicate this already complex issue
even further. The ordinary diphthong rule that guides so
much of our pronunciation, here appropriately used in
the final syllable of reappear (again—to rhyme with fear)
is immediately challenged by the stand-alone word pear,
which rhymes with hair. Now as for hair ... well, enough.
Do you see the point of this digression? I'm trying to
illustrate more than just the tough, often unpredictable,
rule-defying nature of English and its challenges to any
language learner. I'm trying to point out how smart your
youngster is if, in fact, she can read the word
reappeared—even if she doesn't know what it means.
Just consider all the difficult operations her brain per-
forms in a flash to translate the letter clusters into rec-
ognizable sounds and to put all of them together as a
legitimate word in our language. There's a young genius
in your family—and don't forget it!
Many experienced readers as part of their general
attack on unfamiliar words through context will use
word-part clues to help determine word meanings.
In some cases readers draw on known meanings for
familiar letter combinations. These combinations are not
words themselves, but are discrete entities with identifi-
able definitions. A prefix is a cluster of letters with special
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 33

meaning at the beginning of a word. A suffix is a cluster of

letters with special meaning at the end of a word. A root,
generally derived from Latin or Greek, is the base of a
word, a group of letters endowed with meaning and influ-
enced by other elements (like prefixes and suffixes) added
to it. With prefixes, suffixes, and roots we rely on our abil-
ity to recognize stable meanings for certain letter combi-
nations, which may occasionally change their form.
In our example, reappeared, the prefix re, meaning
again, adds on to the base word appear, meaning to
come into view. Appear itself comes from the Latin
apparere, made from the root parere, meaning to show,
and the prefix ad, meaning to. (Languages absorbed into
each other keep adding and changing parts.) The -ed
ending on reappeared, strictly speaking, is not a suffix—
it has no identifiable definition—but is instead an affix,
a letter combination that signals something about a
word. The affix -ed on a verb signals the past tense; -5 at
the end of a verb signals the third person singular; -5 at
the end of a noun signals plural. ("The girl reappears,"
for example, as opposed to "The girls reappear.")
Before we take this discussion of word parts as clues
to meaning any further, you should know that not all
educators believe that prefixes, roots, and suffixes are
major players in the vocabulary building game for chil-
dren. Unfortunately, many of us use the word-part skill
only a posteriori. That is, only after we learn what an
unfamiliar word means do we say, "I see it now! The re
at the beginning means again. Of course, reappear has to
mean to become visible again."
As we read, it's not easy to make the connection
between word parts—like prefixes and suffixes that are
not themselves legitimate words—and the words to
which these parts are attached. In addition, knowing pre-
fixes, roots, and suffixes does not assure that you can spot
them appropriately in a word. The first two letters in reap
(rhyming with sleep), for example, have nothing to do
34 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

with the prefix re, and you'd be off target if you tried to
determine what the word meant from the two letters.
Finally, methods of learning prefixes and suffixes gener-
ally have taken the form of requiring kids to memorize
long alphabetical lists—a torture for most youngsters.
Nevertheless, learning to look at meaningful units
within unfamiliar words is yet another tool for figuring
out what words mean. When you check the charts below,
you'll see that I've presented word-part clusters in related
groups so that you can help your child use them effi-
ciently. In print material that you examine when reading
with your youngster, call attention to words that have rec-
ognizable prefixes, suffixes, or roots. Both the negative
prefixes (a, non, ex, anti, and so on) and the time prefixes
(re, ex, pre, and so on) are so common and accessible that
you will find it easy to pay some attention to them.

Prefixes That Say No

a-: not (asocial)
an-: not (anarchy)
un-: not (unattractive)
im-: not (impossible)
in-: not (insecure)
non-: not (nonviolent)
mis-: wrongly (mistreated)
ir-: without, not (irresponsible)
il-: not (illiberal)
mal-: bad or wrongful (maladjustment)
anti-: against (antimissile)
contra-: against (contradict)

Prefixes That Show Placement

ab-: from or away from (abstain)
circum-: around (circumference)
com-: with, together (commission)
trans-: across (transport)
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 35

dis-: away (displace)

sub-: under (submarine)
inter-: among or between (interlocking)
intra-: within, inwardly (intramurals, introvert)
in-: in or on (invest)
de-: down from (deflect)

Prefixes That Tell Time and Amount

ante-: before (antedate)
pre-: before (predict)
post-: after (postdate)
ex-: former or out of (exconvict)
re-: again, back (repeat)
hyper-: too much (hypertension)
super-: above or highest (superman)
poly-: many (polyangular)
pro-: in favor (proponent)
semi-: half (semicircle)
extra-: beyond, outside (extracurricular)

Prefixes That Mean ne

uni-: single, one (uniform)
homo-: same (homogenize)
self-: one's own person (self-propelled)
mono-: one (monologue)
auto-: self, same (autograph)

Suffixes to Signal Meanings

RELATING TO OR PERTAINING TO SOMEONE WHO
-al (formal) -er (speaker)
-ic (tonic) -or (debtor)
-ance (performance) -ist (florist)
-ence (permanence)
36 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

ABLE TO BE FILLED WITH

-ible (terrible) -ous (joyous)
-able (capable) -y (juicy)
-ful (sorrowful)
STATE OR QUALITY OF WITHOUT
-ship (statesmanship) -less (mindless)
-ment (management)
-ion (tension)
-ness (happiness)
-ism (terrorism)
-hood (manhood)
-tude (aptitude)

Useful Roots for Building Word Knowledge

ROOTS OF THE SENSES EXAMPLE
spect, spic means "look" spectator
loqu, locut means "speak" eloquent
tang, tact means "touch" tangent
vid, vis means "see" vision
voc, vok means "call" vocal

ROOTS OF ACTION
vers, vert means "turn" divert
pos means "place" position
port means "carry" porter
mor, mort means "die" moratorium
mit, mis means "send" admit
or "put"
Let's go back to our selection from Mystery Cat to see
how to help a child struggling with the word reappear or
some other word with a recognizable prefix, suffix, or
root. With reappear, spend some time examining the pre-
fix re. If it means again, you might say, and appear
means to become seen, what does reappear mean? Talk
with your child about any other "re" words she might
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 37

know, like retell, reread, reorder, and recharge. If your

youngster says relax, regret, or repair, praise the effort,
but as you can see, knowing the prefix in those cases
doesn't help a jot in guessing at the meaning. Make lists
of re words, a words, ex words, for example. Examine a
page in a newspaper or magazine and see how many
prefix, suffix, or root words you can find together.
In the paragraph from which we've extracted reappear
(see page 31), do you see any other words in which
knowledge of word parts can help? You spotted pitiful,
didn't you? Help your youngster split the word into its
two parts: pity (the y becomes an i when parts are added
to the word) and the suffix -ful. Share the -ful words you
both know: delightful, beautiful, helpful, so many others.
What does each word mean? Ask your daughter or son to
use each word in an original sentence.
You should be aware of other word-part hints for
readers. A word may be compound. In a compound
word, two words together form a new word whose
meaning might not be immediately apparent. By consid-
ering what the two words mean separately and what
they might mean when put together, you sometimes can
generate a definition. Look at these examples:
treehouse tree + house
bookmark book + mark
offshore off + shore
notepad note + pad
The words in the first column might stump a young
reader confronting them in print for the first time and
not recalling any immediate personal experience with
them. Breaking treehouse into tree and house, your child
could determine the meaning: a house in a tree. She
could come up with that definition even though she
might not know the reality of such an object first hand.
Similarly, she might figure out meanings for bookmark,
offshore, and notepad.
38 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Go back again to the paragraph on Mystery Cat. Did

you see the compound word fireman? The two parts,
obviously, are fire and man and you could draw on what
you know of each word individually to make an educated
guess at what the compound word means. Despite what
some readers see as the inherent sexism in such combi-
nations, the word man helps create many words that
your child must learn to read—even if you should be
teaching him to avoid those words in his own writing in
favor of words with neuter gender, like fire fighter instead
of fireman, for example. Unfortunately, language takes
many years to respond to social awareness, and like it or
not your child will be reading about firemen, policemen,
repairmen, and salesmen well into the next century.
What other -man words can you and your youngster
generate? What more neutral substitutes can you propose?
What other compound words can you identify together
from your everyday vocabulary? Have some fun by making
up your own compounds and defining them: snackchild,
funmom, applechomper, videovictim, for example.
As your youngster turns to you for help in reading,
be aware of compound words and call them to your
child's attention. Your talk of word-part clues can solve
pieces of the reading puzzle. By calling them to your
child's attention, you can expand her options for getting
at the heart of a word.

Making Educated Guesses

So far we've looked at some major areas of reading
designed to help your child mine word meanings. This
list of pointers will help your youngster approach a sen-
tence or paragraph with unfamiliar words.
Mining Meanings: What to Do When You're Stumped
1. Skip the unfamiliar word and read on.
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 39

2. Use the surrounding words and sentences to help

you figure out what the word means.
3. Think of a word you know that might make sense
in place of the word you can't read.
4. If you need more help in reading the word, look at
its parts.
5. If you're really stuck, ask for help.
Using these guidelines, let's practice some more with
discovering meaning in selections containing unfamiliar
words.
Depending on your own energy (always an impor-
tant consideration when helping children!) and your
son's or daughter's age and level of interest, look at these
other words from the selection about the vanishing ele-
phants (page 28) and see how many meanings your
youngster can determine through word-part clues or
context clues. Realize that the five short paragraphs are
an excerpt from a longer newspaper story. For which
words is a dictionary absolutely essential?
wildlife international
conservation Nairobi
estimates Tsavo
Zaire concentration
decline neighboring
continent slaughter
You'll have lots of practice focusing your youngster
on context when she brings home pages of her textbooks
or other readings and asks for your assistance. Never-
theless, I've selected some examples that you might like
to try out. In each case, help your child use clues in the
surrounding print environment to determine meanings.
No dictionaries, now—unless you are completely con-
vinced that the context provides little help.
40 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

The company behind the project, Space Bios-

pheres Ventures (SBV), has brought in scientists
from around the world to help. The people at
SBV are, in a sense, model builders. They're try-
ing to build a model of one of the most elaborate
systems in the universe.
SBV scientists refer to Earth as "Biosphere I."
Biosphere is another word for ecosystem, the
complex network of nature that has a niche for
every living thing.
Biosphere II, if successful, will be a working
model of Biosphere I. The structure, about 600
feet long and 85 feet high, will cover an area larger
than two football fields. Inside will be seven differ-
ent Earth zones, or "biomes." At the south end of
the building will be the desert biome, complete
with a 50-foot-high mountain. . . . The scientists
living inside, who will be called "biospherians,"
will have to work together as a team. Each will be
a specialist in his own field. . . .
—Boy's Life Magazine
Words to Define
ecosystem niche
biome biospherian

Have you ever heard of insects called fleas?

Some types of fleas live on dogs. Fleas suck blood
from a dog's body. They depend on the dog for
their food. This can be very harmful to the dog.
Some fleas even carry diseases that can make
dogs very sick.
Living things that depend on and harm other
living things are called parasites. Fleas are para-
sites. Living things that parasites depend on are
called hosts. A dog is a flea's host.
—Third-grade science textbook
 MINING WORD MEANINGS 41

Words to Define
flea parasite
disease host
harmful

Animals that eat other animals are called car-

nivores. Some carnivores can also be called
predators. A predator is an animal that hunts
other animals for food. The animal that a preda-
tor hunts is called a prey.
—Third-grade science textbook

Words to Define
carnivore prey
predator

How could the Texas ranchers get their cattle

to the railroad towns? They decided to walk their
cattle there. In those days very few people lived
in the Southwestern United States. There were
no fences. The cattle could travel for days along
trails through open spaces. It was the job of the
cowhands to move the cattle along the trails. The
trip was called a cattle drive. . . .
Sometimes the cattle were frightened by a
loud or strange noise. Then the whole herd stam-
peded, or ran wildly.
—Third-grade social studies textbook

Words to Define
rancher southwestern
trails cowhand
stampede cattle drive

Now, when the cry "What does this word

mean?" echoes through your living room, you'll
42 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

be able to say, "Let me help you figure it out on

your own."
Mothers and fathers of school-age kids are
not dictionaries.
Here are a few final words of summary, in
poetry, from Jill Marie Warner, a reading special-
ist in Ithaca, New York.

Independent Strategies
When I get stuck on a word in a book,
There are lots of things to do.
I can do them all, please, by myself;
I don't need help from you.
I can look at the picture to get a hint,
Or think what the story's about.
I can "get my mouth ready" to say the first letter,
A kind of "sounding out."
I can chop the word into smaller parts,
Like on and ing and ly,
Or find smaller words in compound words
Like raincoat and bumblebee.
I can think of a word that makes sense in that place,
Guess or say "blank" and read on
Until the sentence has reached its end,
Then go back and try these on:
"Does it make sense?"
"Can we say it that way?"
"Does it look right to me?"
Chances are the right word will pop out like the sun
In my own mind, can't you see?
If I've thought of and tried out most of these things
And I still do not know what to do,
Then I may turn around and ask
For some help to get me through.
—Jill Marie Warner
 3

Words, The Magic Kingdom

When Alice faces the extraordinary Wonderland notions of

saying what you mean and meaning what you say, she con-
fronts language's great potential and disappointment.
Words should, but do not always, mean what they say; and
we who use them do not always produce what we mean. If
only we could point to a direct correspondence between
each word and only one exact meaning! Reading would
simplify in a flash. Ah, but what we might gain in exact-
ness and dazzling clarity, surely we would lose in flexibility,
nuance, suggestiveness, and contextual richness. It's good
that words have such a wide range of meanings and uses;
as such they enrich our capabilities as earths highest life
forms and its most competent communicators.
Knowing the possibilities of language, understand-
ing the many qualities of words and how our language
depends on them, can enhance your child's attempts to
determine meaning from print.
In the long climb up the mountain to word mastery,
a major feature of language that you can help your
youngster understand is that words often mean more
than they say.

43
44 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Meaning—and Meaning
Certainly, words have denotative meanings. That is,
words have exact definitions that you could check easily
in a dictionary.
A jeep is a heavy-duty, four-wheeled vehicle.
A communist is someone who believes in a social
and political system characterized by common owner-
ship and labor organized for the common good.
A frigate is a high-speed, medium-sized war vessel of
the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
Yet each of these words has connotative meanings
as well. What a word connotes is what it suggests or
implies beyond its actual meaning—including the asso-
ciations and feelings aroused by the word. A jeep is
more than a motor vehicle with four-wheel drive; its
connection with the military and rugged outdoor life
suggests certain associations—rough riding, speed,
even danger perhaps. Your son or daughter might like
to ride to school in a jeep just for the fun of it, but
you'd have 'been puzzled (to say nothing of your par-
ents!) if your date for the senior prom honked the jeep
horn outside your front door when he arrived to pick
you up.
Similarly, the word communist carries connotations
not at all part of its dictionary meaning. Depending on
your own political and economic viewpoint, of course,
you might think of a communist as a traitor, an innova-
tor, a hopeless dreamer, a third-world revolutionary, or a
modern-day savior.
And as you consider the word frigate, you soon real-
ize that it says more than its essential denotative mean-
ing as a warship. Its connection with swashbucklers,
gun runners, and pirates, with red-blazing cannons
amid the spume of waves, brings an inescapably roman-
tic connotation. (By romantic I mean the sense of great
deeds and exploits in past ages.) Frigates mean high
 WORDS, THE MAGIC KINGDOM 45

adventure, open seas, stolen treasures, and captured

loves.
Denotation and connotation underlie word choice,
conscious and unconscious, especially for good writers.
Look at how William Safire deals with the issue in this
brief excerpt from his column in The New York Times
Magazine:
At the start of a new Administration, the short list
is the place for an officeseeker to be. It is a kind
of honor to be on the lips of the Great Mention-
ers of the media, enabling the mentionee to bask
in the attention without having to fill out the
onerous ethics forms.
A synonymous phrase for on the short list is
among the final contenders, each meaning "small
group of those under consideration," though con-
tender imputes to the mentionee his or her active
solicitation of the job. Although finalist is some-
times used, that word carries too much of a
beauty-contest connotation, and competitor, even
more than contender, shows not the proper defer-
ence to the fiction that "the office seeks the
man."
Had you ever stopped to consider the shades of
meaning among those very closely related words in ital-
ics? Safire openly points out the denotative and conno-
tative differences because he wants you to reflect on the
words as words. Generally, however, writers expect read-
ers themselves to acknowledge explicit and implicit
meanings thoughtfully. Rarely will a writer point out the
exact meanings she expects you to bring to her words.
That's part of the reading process itself.
All writers, but especially poets, labor to choose
words with appropriate denotative and connotative
meanings that advance the writers intentions. Consider
46 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

how this first stanza of Emily Dickinson's famous poem

compels us essentially through word choice to see read-
ing poetry as a supremely adventurous and romantic
activity. Pay special attention to the words in italics.

There is no Frigate like a Book

To Take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
of prancing Poetry.

This poem provides a mini-study in denotation and

connotation. You know about the associations for the
word frigate from our previous discussion: excitement,
daring, romance. Dickinson's point is to make us see
how reading, especially reading poetry, is a quintessen-
tially romantic act. Choosing the word frigate instead of
ship, say, or boat or launch or steamer helps establish
conditions of romance, immediately connecting us to an
adventurous past. (For street-smart high-school kids,
frigate sounds like the familiar contraction, the "F-curse"
followed by the word it. No doubt Dickinson would not
appreciate street language connotations imposed on her
word choice, but if you're talking about this poem with
adolescents, you've got to know that they're snickering
at "Friggit!" not frigate.)
Dickinson's word lands similarly heightens the
drama and distance traveled by this bold sea vessel, the
frigate—which stands for a book of poetry in the com-
parison here. Think of how different an effect we'd have
if Dickinson had said in line 2, "To take us miles (or
streets or blocks or yards or even countries) away."
In case you didn't know, a courser is a swift, spirited
horse used as a charger in battle. How the word packs
the line with meaning! A page of poetry has the vigor,
the courage, the passion of a soldier-carrying horse in a
war. Consider how different an idea the poet would have
 WORDS, THE MAGIC KINGDOM 47

produced with a word like horse or mare or colt or even

stallion. And the word prancing, too, reinforces the lively
imagery that Dickinson connects so strongly with read-
ing a poem. Like a horse that struts about full of life, so
is a page of poetry. Every word I placed in italics in the
poem reinforces the desired sense of adventure.
To mine the riches of anything we read, we must be
alive to denotation and connotation, and you should
help your child acknowledge these qualities of words
and to probe deeply when he or she considers mean-
ings. Critical readers do not rely simply upon hasty or
superficial definitions. Writers depend on connotations
as much as denotations to shape intended meaning,
and readers can lose powerful insights in a piece of
writing if they don't stop to think, "Hmmm. Why did
she use that word instead of another with the same or
similar definition?"
Have some fun at home with your youngster of eight
or nine, even younger. After you've considered what
denotation and connotation mean as concepts, talk with
your child about what words like those below denote—-
and then what they connote to her.

• grandmother
• smoking
• jet plane
• black cat
• college
Then, look at the groups of words below and talk
together about their denotative and connotative mean-
ings. Your child will sense rather quickly that all the
words in each group have roughly the same denotative
meanings, but that the connotations are different in each
case. You might start by placing words in categories of
positive and negative connotations. Soon, however, you
48 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

will realize that those categories are overly simplistic.

Weighing the subtleties is all the fun. Try to draw out
details in the manner that I presented them in the dis-
ussion of jeep, communist, and frigate on page 44.

How Are These Grouped Words Alike? Different?

1. thin, skinny, slender, shapely
2. male, manly, masculine, macho
3. smart, shrewd, brilliant
4. unpleasant, mean, nasty
5. light, lamp, chandelier
6. scared, frightened, anxious, cowardly, yellow
7. tired, exhausted, weary, pooped, drained
8. grin, smile, smirk
9. firm, stubborn, unyielding
10. overweight, heavy, chubby, fat, obese
Another excellent source for addressing important
language issues like multiple meanings, denotation, and
connotation is the advertisements in newspapers and
magazines to which you and your child have access. You
know how carefully advertising agencies struggle to
choose language designed to create effects and, ulti-
mately, to get readers to buy a product. Look with your
child at familiar ads. Talk about word choice. Try substi-
tuting for a word another word with similar meaning. Is
the effect the,same? Why or why not?

Children and Figures

Much of the riches and diversity in our language use
resides in figurative expressions. Before I define the
 WORDS, THE MAGIC KINGDOM 49

term, here's a short, composite conversation between

Saul, our ten-year old, and his older brother Joseph,
thirteen.

SAUL: Ma, I'm trying to watch Cosby. Get him

out of here. He's bugging me.
JOSEPH: If you weren't such a little rat . . . We're
not watching Cosby. We're watching
Police Academy.
SAUL: Oh, no we're not.
JOSEPH: You always have to get your way. You act
like a baby.

Sound familiar? The argument, certainly, is typical—

and so is some of the language. In this little verbal battle
between two headstrong kids you see three examples of
figurative language, all in italics: He's bugging me, if you
weren't such a little rat, you act like a baby.
What is figurative language? Simply, language that
compares. Using figurative language is a need shared by
all human beings: We explain, refer to, understand
objects and ideas in terms of other objects and ideas. To
make our language clearer, more interesting, even more
poetic, we make statements that are not literally true.
When we try to create images; to paint pictures with
words, we often rely on figurative language.
None of the highlighted expressions that I repeated
from my two boys' conversation is literal—they do not
mean exactly what they say. Joseph and Saul were not
talking about bugs, rats, and babies. Looking at the first
instance, for example, we see that Saul was comparing
Joseph to an insect—even though he was really talking
about Joseph. The phrase "bugging me" means that a
person is behaving annoyingly—like a fly, a mosquito, or
a bee perhaps. But with trite figurative expressions like
"bugging," we've lost the freshness of the visual connec-
tion. We no longer see the pictures that the words origi-
50 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

nally intended to create. I'll bet that if I hadn't explained

the image that "bugging" aimed for, the words would
not have produced any picture in your mind. The figures
start off originally, of course, but with overuse they
become vapid.
Good writers who use figures, however, aim for sur-
prise and delight, and they expect vivid pictures to leap
to mind when you read them. An original figure always
puts together unlikely objects or ideas. On first thought,
you wouldn't imagine that the two are actually related,
but as you weigh the comparison you see the relation
between the terms and the new idea delights and
enlightens you for its clarity and freshness.
A sentence in the first paragraph of George Orwell's
brilliant essay, "A Hanging," is so rich in figurative lan-
guage that the image is unmistakable. Look at the two
versions below, the first without the figures, the second
just as Orwell wrote it (the italics are mine):

A yellow light was slanting over the high

walls into the jail yard.
A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting
over the high walls into the jail yard.

The first sentence above does provide a picture, cer-

tainly. We see the jail yard, the high walls, and the slant-
ing yellow light over them. The description is com-
pletely literal—no comparisons here. The second
sentence, on the other hand, is figurative, and as a
result indelibly vivid. We know that light cannot be ill
(only living things can have good or bad health); yet by
calling the light sickly and thereby comparing it to a liv-
ing entity, Orwell establishes the moment's pervasive
infirmity. Another original figure fills our minds with
picture: The light is so densely yellow it looks like tin-
foil. No tinfoil actually appears high above the prison
 WORDS, THE MAGIC KINGDOM 51

walls, of course. And what an unusual pair of objects to

relate; light and yellow tinfoil. Yet by means of this
comparison between unlikely partners, Orwell paints a
highly original picture. If you have seen or can imagine
yellow tinfoil, you can picture the kind of bright, tex-
tured, reflective light he wants you to see slanting over
the jail yard walls.
In making comparisons, writers draw on a wide
range of rhetorical techniques identified and named by
the early Greeks. The most familiar—the figures your
children are most apt to find in their reading at school
and at home—are simile, metaphor, and personification.
(If you're interested in helping your child use original
figurative language in his own writing, see my book Any
Child Can Write.)
A simile is a comparison in which one object is said
to be like another. The words like or as usually signal
this kind of figurative expression. Orwell's comparison
of light to yellow tinfoil is a simile: The word like says
that the one object is similar to the other. Here are some
others I've drawn from writers you may know:

O, my luve is like a red, red rose

That's newly sprung in June.
O my luve is like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
—Robert Burns

In the sky the sun hung like an apricot.

T. Ernest Wright

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
—Langston Hughes
52 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

The mysterious East faced me, perfumed like

a flower, silent like death, dark like a grave.
—Joseph Conrad

His face was white as pie-dough and his arms

were lank and white as peeled sticks.
—Robert Smith

A metaphor is an implied comparison. That is, one

object is said to be another object. When the objects are
quite different, the equation is striking.
Her hand, a withered brown leaf, fluttered to
her side.
Here, someone's hand is compared to a leaf, suggest-
ing frailty and age. But the hand is not said to be like a
leaf—the hand is the leaf. If we rewrite Orwell's simile to
make it a metaphor, it would read: A sickly light, yellow
tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail
yard. In this sentence, the light and the tinfoil are one.
More metaphors:
If dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
—Langston Hughes

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

a tattered coat upon a stick.
—William Butler Yeats

My father's body was a globe of fear

His body was a town we never knew.
—Michael Ondaatje

In personification, nonhuman things are given the

qualities of living, usually human, beings. When Orwell
 WORDS, THE MAGIC KINGDOM 53

calls the light sickly, he endows it with a human trait.

Here are some other examples of personification:
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
—Philip Larkin

Scarlett saw a thin tongue of flame lick up over

the roof of the warehouse in whose sheltering
shadow they sat.
—Margaret Mitchell

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches on the soul
—Emily Dickinson

When duty whispers low, Thou must

The youth replies, / can.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love walked alone

The rocks cut her tender feet
And the branches tore her fair limbs.
—Stephen Crane

Helping Your Child with Figurative Language

Why have I taken all this time to remind you of figura-
tive language? My first point was to show you how
deepseated the instinct for comparison lies in your
child's mind and in his or her language. We, children and
adults, generate our own figures—some trite, some origi-
54 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

nal—in regular conversation. So natural a method of

thought and expression, figurative language is a main-
stay in written work, too. Yet when children read figures,
they are often mystified, seeing metaphor or personifica-
tion, for example, as a kind of sidetracking. You can see
puzzlement in their eyes; what's going on here, they won-
der? A page of literal information makes a sudden foray
into figure's territory and we have confusion.
Writers in newspapers, magazines, and books, writ-
ers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, draw regularly on
figures to make a point clearer or more lively, and often
both. Children need guidance in negotiating the figures
that appear regularly in their reading material. You'll
find these pointers useful:

Helping Your Child. Understand Figurative Language

• Be sure that your child is aware that the writer is
making a comparison and is not merely sidetracking. In
the example above, Her hand, a withered brown leaf, flut-
tered to her side, the writer is describing a woman's
hand. By introducing the leaf, he is riot suddenly shift-
ing gears to describe an autumnal scene. He merely is
sharpening a picture by drawing together two unlikely
companions in a fresh and satisfying manner.
• Make sure that your child, in concentrating on the
figure, doesn't lose the writer's point. Reading figurative
language often requires a high degree of attentiveness,
especially regarding metaphor, which can be very subtle
for a child. Look at this example in a poem by Robert
Frost. Frost, setting a scene for us to appreciate his nar-
rator's loneliness in the poem "Bereft," writes
Out in the porch's sagging floor
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
 WORDS, THE MAGIC KINGDOM 55

• It takes a few minutes to realize the metaphor

here: a pile of leaves are a sinister snake. This is an
unlikely comparison, to be sure, but a highly original
one and brilliant in its precision for the moment's mood.
The metaphor is just a comparison: nothing further
about snakes will appear here. You should be able to
help your child understand the figurative language he
meets when he reads, assisting him to return to the
main idea of the text.
• Help your child look for words like like, as, seems,
similar to, resembles, or than as signals for figurative lan-
guage.
• Help your child state the comparison in his or her
own language.
• Talk with your child about why the writer has
made the comparison. If we ask ourselves, for example,
why Frost compares the leaves to a snake or why Orwell
calls the light sickly, the answers reveal much about the
writer's tone and purpose.

How would some of these tips work practically when

your child consults with you about reading? Let's exam-
ine a line from a paragraph on popcorn that appears in
a second-grade workbook.

The corn used to make popcorn has a hard

shell. The white part we like to eat is inside. Also
inside the hard shell is a little water. The popcorn
is heated up. The heat changes the water to steam.
The steam pushes so hard that the shell blows up.
It pops! All at once the white part pops out. It gets
much bigger. It almost covers the old shell. The old
shell seems to peek out of a white cloud.

Why, in this paragraph on how corn pops, does the

writer suddenly talk about a cloud? We have a compari-
56 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

son here. How do you know? Can your child state the
comparison—what is being compared to what? And why?
The clue "seems to" tells the alert reader that this is a
simile, an explicit comparison between a kernel of popped
corn and a cloud. The writer is counting on a young child's
ability to envision the sun peeking out from behind a cloud.
He hopes that your child will transfer that mental picture to
the heated kernel, whose yellow shell, like the sun, is just
barely visible within the white mass of popped corn.
Why has the writer provided a simile? Certainly to
create a sharp mental picture. Anyone who hasn't seen a
popped kernel can visualize it through the connection to
sun and clouds. We're not expecting a sudden treatise on
meteorology here. The picture drawn, the writer can con-
tinue his story.
I want to call your attention in passing to the context
for the simile we just looked at. It wasn't poetry or fic-
tion, the two most available written sources for regular
use of figurative language. The value of comparisons is
unassailable: Even in this "science" lesson, the impor-
tance of the figure asserts itself. 1 point this out for you
to see that comparisons will appear regularly in the
reading that your son or daughter does for school and
on his or her own.
Let's examine some other examples drawn from writ-
ing for children in various grade levels. How would you
deal with these if you and your youngster uncovered
them in a joint reading session?

Social Studies: Grade Three

The rice raised near Konduru grows on land cov-
ered with water. It is grown in paddies. A rice
paddy is a piece of land with low walls of dirt
around it. It is like a pool that gets filled up with
rain water.
 WORDS, THE MAGIC KINGDOM 57

oetry: Second Grade

CLOUDS
If I had a spoon
As tall as the sky
I'd dish out the clouds
That go slip-sliding by
—Dorothy Aldis

Science Reading: Fourth Grade

"What's happening?" asked Mr. Rose.
"Justin was pushing. He stepped on my foot,"
Richard answered.
"But it was an accident!" Justin insisted.
Mr. Rose said, "Put the brakes on, Justin.
There's plenty of room in the van. Let's go."
—Harriet Ziefert

Young Boy's Magazine

For two years, the scientists expect to depend
on their own little world, known as Biosphere II,
for survival. Their air, water, and food will be
produced inside the green-house-like building,
with no supplies coming in from the outside
world.
—William R. Forstchen

Science Textbook: Third Grade

Conifers either have needle-shaped leaves or
scalelike leaves.

Weekly Reader: Grade Four

Sounds enter the inner ear and go into a tu
that has tiny hairlike cells.
58 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Fiction: Third Grade

And all the while that strange feeling of want-
ing to be good, of wanting to be perfect, washed
over him like a big splash of warm bath water.

Children's Magazine
Rossini's music is often difficult to perform
because it's usually very fast. The notes, when
they're sung, have to trip and jump off the tongue,
more rapidly than a tongue can handle them
unless that tongue happens to belong to a very
good singer.

We've looked at the magic kingdom of words, and

weighed many of its possibilities. We're just about ready
to jump on the reading track to explore words as consec-
utive entities on a printed page. But before racing for-
ward, we have to take an important detour.
 4

Reading Warm-Ups

I've told you that this book will help you help your child
be a better reader. After our discussion of the power and
glory of words, you're probably expecting me to gun the
accelerator across the vast reading roadways beckoning
your son or daughter.
But no, not yet. We're still not ready to talk about
reading as you probably think of it, the moment that
your youngster opens a science or social studies or
"reading" book and starts her journey through the
pages.
Why the delay? We have some troubleshooting to do.
You have to be able to prepare for those times at home
when your guidance can improve comprehension dra-
matically. You have to stimulate your child to read with
the highest possible degree of attention and to get the
most from his or her print experience with minimal
frustration.
To reach those goals, before we do anything else we
need to talk about warm-up activities, essential but
often neglected areas of reading's domain. "Warm-up is a
familiar phrase: When you warm up, you prepare to

59
60 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

achieve something you want to do well. Runners push

against a fence or wall to stretch their muscles before an
early morning jog. Pitchers toss a few practice shots
before flinging the first ball to the opposing batter. On
land swimmers shake their arms and wriggle their legs
before taking the big plunge. Mentally, competitive ath-
letes warm up by "imaging," a technique in which they
picture all the details of the upcoming meet, project
themselves into it, and try to feel all the attendant sen-
sory responses.
Warming up is as important and as useful an activity
for readers as it is for exercisers and athletes. The warm-
up session is one that teachers pay little attention to at
school; although they may show the whole class some of
the strategies I'm about to recommend, they don't often
help children apply some of these warm-up techniques
on their own. And yet of all the areas in which you can
contribute to your youngster's growth as a reader, this
one strikes me as one of the easiest to achieve and one
of the most significant in its potential for long-range
success.

Previewing
Children, and many adults, too, unfortunately, often
leap into a reading selection without much advance
thinking about the awaiting territory. As a result, they
can stumble easily before they make much progress,
simply because the ideas, details, and vocabulary strike
no familiar chords in their minds and imaginations. You
can help your child enormously by prodding him to find
out as much as he can about what he's reading—before
reading it.
Sound strange? Perhaps—but even before a child
r s a few pages, she can learn a great deal about what
a aits her simply by previewing. Previewing means
 READING WARM-UPS 61

"viewing beforehand." In other words, you look ahead

before you read in order to learn as much as you can in
advance from the various clues that leap out at you.
What clues? If you examine any of your child's
school books—I'm talking mostly about recently pub-
lished ones here—you'll see what a careful job of layout
and design the publisher performed to entice your
youngster to read. Lavish pictures and illustrations,
perky chapter titles and subtitles, two-color ink and
other lively typographical elements, running heads,
embedded definitions of new vocabulary, special sec-
tions like glossaries and appendixes in the back of the
book, detailed indexes and tables of contents—a cornu-
copia of reading aides for the modern reader. Unfortu-
nately, many youngsters ignore these features and, as a
result, miss out on powerful guides that help navigate
the occasionally rough seas of an unfamiliar reading
selection.
You can help your child learn to preview both whole
books and individual selections in books—chapters, sec-
tions, a few consecutive pages—by calling attention to
the various features of the books he uses regularly at
home and school.
Let's look at some of the helpful features of books in
general.

Tips for Previewing Books

• Look at the table of contents. Found in the front
of the book, the table of contents is a list of the names of
the chapters and the pages on which they begin. If the
book is divided into parts, that information also appears
in the table of contents. If you study the names of the
chapters you can get an idea of what each section of the
book deals with, of how the topics relate to each other.
Sometimes a table of contents is very detailed: You
might find a listing of the topics treated in each chapter.
62 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

• Look at the preface. Coming before the table of

contents, the preface, sometimes also called the fore-
word, is a brief essay in which an author gives reasons
for writing the book. From the preface you get an idea
of the kind of reader the author is writing for, of the
aims the author has for the book, what she expects you
to learn as a result of reading it, and of the topics in the
book and the approaches to those topics. The preface is
a personal message to the reader. Often the author will
thank the people who helped to prepare the book. Not
all books will have a preface, as you may know; and
sometimes a preface will deal with matters that interest
the author but may not have much to do with the spe-
cific ideas in the book. Still, it's good to look the preface
over, even if you just skim it, so that you can judge for
yourself whether or not to read it carefully.
• Look briefly at the index. At the end of a book
you may find an alphabetical listing of the topics, sub-
jects, ideas, and names mentioned within. A quick look
at the index will suggest some of the points the writer
deals with and how detailed the book might be.
• Look at one of these special features that
sometimes appear in books:
• After the last chapter a writer sometimes provides
a glossary, which is a list of difficult words or
terms in regard to the book's subject. The words
are listed in alphabetical order; their definitions
appear also. The fact that a book has a glossary
may indicate that the subject is technical but that
the author does try to explain the difficulties.
• An appendix (plural appendixes or appendices) at
the end of the book presents additional informa-
tion that is interesting and useful. However, the
book is complete without the appendix, and the
information we find there is only extra. An appen-
dix may include charts and graphs, special letters
 READING WARM-UPS 63

or documents, or facts about the lives of the peo-

ple mentioned in the book. It may just give infor-
mation to explain something the author felt
needed more attention. A look at the appendix, if
the book has one, will indicate how a writer deals
with special problems.
• Read the introduction. Often the first chapter of
th book, the introduction states the basic problem the
author will deal with. It gives background information
or discusses the history of the topic. It may summarize
what others have said about the subject. It may even
explain the method of research the author used. Some-
times—especially in a work of fiction like a novel, a col-
lection of short stories, or a play—someone other than
the author writes the introduction. Such an introduction
often explains the book to the readers, pointing out key
scenes or ideas worth noting.
• Look at the bibliography. At the back of the book
an author sometimes gives a bibliography—a list, in
alphabetical order, of some or all the books that helped
the author to write this book. The bibliography (some-
times called works cited or references) can tell you the
author's range of knowledge and basic interests.
• Think about what parts the book has and doesn't
have. A book with a detailed index, a long bibliography,
and a number of appendixes may be more appropriate for
research than a book with only a short table of contents.
Books with glossaries often provide helpful introductions
to difficult subjects.
Once you've spent some time reviewing these fea-
tures with your child, examine together any book from
her book bag or home library shelf. Keep reminding
your youngster to preview the books she needs for
school. Her teacher may have introduced the general
concept of previewing early in the school year, but,
believe me, once is not enough. Books vary greatly in
64 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

the support they offer readers, and unless you know

exactly what the book you're using has to offer, you
could be missing out on lots of help. When I discovered
that even my college students failed to consult their end-
of-text glossary in a poetry course, or when my col-
league in the math department told me that she realized
from poor homework grades that her students never
knew their textbook provided all the answers to prob-
lems—it was then that I began previewing all books that
I assign in the courses I teach.
Confident of the various parts of her books, your
child also needs your guidance in learning how to pre-
view a typical book selection or a selection in any of the
magazines or special readers that teacher assigns.

Previewing a Reading Selection

• Look at the title. Titles often given the main idea
of the selection. Does the title tell what you will be read-
ing about? If so, you can then set a purpose for your
reading.
• Look for subtitles or headings. Essays, newspa-
pers articles, and other longer readings include print sub-
titles or headings. Appearing below titles in heavy, dark
print or in italics, subtitles suggest the kind of informa-
tion that you will find in a small portion of the reading.
• Look at lists of goals or objectives., Sometimes a
selection gives a list of goals for a chapter. Here, the
writer tells you what you should get out of it. Check the
goals before you read so that you'll know what to read for.
• Look at the pictures, charts, or drawings. Often
an illustration helps you figure out in advance what
your reading will deal with.
• Look at the first sentence of each paragraph.
This gives you a quick idea of what the reading involves
before you begin to read carefully.
• Look at the first paragraph. The first paragraph
 READING WARM-UPS 65

usually tells just what the reading will be about. Read it,
and then try to say in your own words what you think
you will be reading about.
• Look at any questions that appear after the
reading. If you look at the questions before you read,
you then have an idea of what's important. Questions
tell you what to expect from a passage. When you read
with a knowledge of the questions, you know in advance
what kind of information to look for.
• Look for key words in different print. Some-
times heavy bold letters, italics, or even colored ink calls
your attention to important words or ideas. Titles of
books, for example, appear in italics. Noting these in
advance can give you important information.
• Look for a summary. At the end of a piece, a writer
sometimes summarizes the main points. Look at the sum-
mary before you read a selection. The summary can help
you see more clearly what the selection deals with.
On pages 66-69 is an excerpt from a popular fourth-
grade geography book. Which special features would
you point out to your youngster?
Did you notice the chapter title in large upper case
letters? Did you notice the photograph above the chap-
ter title? Discussing these before your child reads the
chapter can stimulate much creative thought about the
contents. Note, too, these other elements, which are
repeated throughout the book, and which can provide a
window on meaning before your child ever reads a sin-
gle paragraph within:

• The subheadings. "Ways of Living" is a second-

level head; "Migration Changes Cities," "Languages of
the World," and "Language Families" are third-level
heads. The second-level heads, in large upper and lower
case letters, appear in black ink. The third-level heads,
all in upper case letters, appear in orange ink.
• The table and chart. There's a table on urban
70 Y CHILD CAN READ BETTER

populations (which the writers might have labeled more

clearly with a title) and an excellent chart called "The
Indo-European Language Family." These present com-
plex materials in easy-to-understand visual formats.
(You'll read more about visual aids in Chapter 6.) Again,
a quick conversation about what a reader can learn from
these elements helps prepare for thoughtful reading.
• The questions on reading materials. In this book,
one set of questions appears in a regularly repeated sec-
tion, "Checkpoint," which is identified with the attrac-
tive bull's-eye logo in the margin. Questions are also
integrated within prose discussions. Considering ques-
tions in advance of reading helps focus attention on
important points to look for.
• The difficult vocabulary in boldface out in the mar-
gin, accompanied by pronunciation clues and defini-
tions. These highlighted words, anthropologist and arche-
ologist, also appear in a glossary in the back of the book.
• The special display "What Is Culture?" set off in a
box, one of its edges a double band of bright orange ink.
This display allows the authors to consider an important
concept that they do not treat directly in the text. Again,
this is a repeated element in the book.

Armed with the skills of previewing, your child will learn a

great deal about what he has to read before he reads it and
thereby will enhance possibilities for comprehension and
retention. Researchers believe that we can prepare our
minds for more attentive reading simply by becoming
aware of the issues that might arise in a selection. For
example, examining some of the text's special vocabulary in
boldface print or in headings and subheadings makes it
easier to deal with the words in the selection itself, words
that otherwise might throw a developing reader off track.
When you preview, you get an advanced look at the
action, like a preview of coming attractions in the
 READING WARM-UPS 71

movies. When you see a snippet of Indiana Jones

squirming in a cave of rats or smashing a villains ugly
face, you're primed to see the whole film when it
reaches your neighborhood movie house later on. Pre-
viewing a book gets you ready in much the same way.

Prereading Warm-Ups
Previewing is not the only kind of before-reading activity
that you can help your child practice. Experts in reading
now talk of "prereading," and I want to tell you a little
about it so that you can encourage your youngster along
these lines as soon as possible. Prereading means "before
reading": When you preread, you brainstorm before you
read by trying to think of whatever you know about the
topic. You can get a sense of the topic from the title, the
subheads, the illustrations, and the other elements I've
already pointed out in this chapter.
In prereading, you consider all the possibilities that
the ensuing pages might address simply by thinking
about the topic in advance. In this way, you improve
your ability to understand it better and to get the most
out of it. You draw on your personal experiences, your
prior reading and knowledge, your imagination, your
thoughts—anything that leaps to mind that might in
some way relate to the topic. Even if we're about to read
something we think we really don't know much about,
we can set our brain juices flowing by trying to imagine
what the writer will address or what questions we'd like
to have answered about the topic or what issues we'd
like to read about. By taking that extra step—thinking
about the topic before reading begins—a child can
enhance comprehension enormously.
Suppose your child is about to read an article on
dinosaurs in the Weekly Reader. Before reading, set your
youngster thinking about whatever she remembers of those
72 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

huge animals that lumbered across the steamy regions of

the earth millions of years ago. Encourage you child's
advance thinking on the topic. In that way, you'll be helping
her prepare her mind for any new information. When she
reads, the warm-up will help her understand new ideas.
Researchers encourage readers to write down their
prereading warm-up activities. The process of writing
thoughts down allows a reader to make desultory
impressions permanent and serves as a good touchpoint
for emerging ideas. Encourage your boy or girl to jot pre-
reading ideas down on paper. Don't be concerned with
spelling or grammar errors: just get those ideas down!
Your youngster may use one of a number of strate-
gies for writing down and organizing advance thoughts
on a reading.

Prereading Warm-Ups
• Make a List. With this kind of warm-up exercise,
encourage your child to make a list of whatever
comes to mind about the topic of the reading, as
announced in the title, subtitles, captions, pho-
tographs, or any other elements in the text. In the
list below, the reader wrote down all her thoughts
about a selection she was assigned on dinosaurs:
Dinosaurs
animals early creatures-prehistoric
lay eggs?
huge bodies, little heads
live in swampy places
none left now (exinct?)
big bones left in mts. (Utah, any other place?)
muzeems put bones back together
dinosaur toys very poplar now
dinosaurs not too smart
 READING WARM-UPS 73

movies: King Kong?

Some fly: man eaters?
As you can see, the list includes many different
impressions, from dinosaurs today back to dinosaurs in
early history. And notice the errors: extinct, museums,
and popular are all misspelled. Again, the errors are
unimportant. The child tried just to record all the
unedited thoughts she had on the subject, just to stimu-
late mental activity before she reads. When kids have to
worry about mistakes, they dam up the flow of their cre-
ative juices. Recent research in writing confirms that
observation: Writers who attend to correctness too early
in the writing process sweep aside considerations of
thought and content.

• D o brainstorming. You've heard the term brain-

storming, haven't you—literally, it means "a storm
in the brain." The most productive way to brain-
storm is to raise as many questions as you can
about the topic of a selection before you read it.
Using as many clues as possible—photographs,
illustrations, charts, titles and subtitles, and so
forth—help your child make a list of questions he
might want to answer when he reads. On page 74
are questions that Saul raised in advance brain-
storming for the geography book selection that we
looked at on pages 66-69.
• Freewrite. When your child freewrites, she writes
freely about the subject of the piece she's going to
read. Producing consecutive sentences on paper,
she writes about the topic nonstop without editing
her thoughts. She writes whatever comes to her
mind about the reading just before she reads it.
Here again, visual clues can be very helpful. As
with the list-making activity, this one also requires
74 ANY C D CAN READ BETTER

no attention to errors. Discourage spelling or

grammar corrections. The point is to get as many
ideas as possible on paper, no matter how strange
or remote from the topic they may seem. Here's an
example of freewriting prepared in advance of
reading the selection from the geography text:

The earth's people. I don't know what to think

about them. I am an earth's people. I am inter-
ested in languages but what is a language family?
How is a language a family? Maybe one is like
the father and the others are like babies. I can't
 READING WARM-UPS 75

say some of the words on the chart. Like Bahari

and Urdu. My mother speaks German. Her fam-
ily came over to America many years ago. How
come some cities grow and others don't. I visited
Baltimore once. It was nice. It's on the chart on
p. 81.

Do you see how this reader just put down whatever

ideas leaped to mind as she thought about the topic?
Note how she drew on her own experiences to help her
think about the issue. When she reads, some points in
the selection will seem familiar to her.

• Make a Word Map. With a word map, your child

produces her thoughts in a visual format. This
visual scheme is called a map because it repre-
sents words and ideas as shapes and connects
them—in much the same way that countries or
states are connected in the maps we use for geog-
raphy. Using lines, arrows, circles, boxes, and
other shapes, your youngster can map her ideas
on a subject she's ready to read about before she
begins reading.

Don't think of this word map exercise as having any

rules or rigid requirements. For this visual prereading
warmup device, you want to help your youngster lay out
his thoughts in a picture. The visual joins related infor-
mation.
Suppose your youngster brought home a reading
lection called "The Greatest Tightrope Walker." How
could you use a word map to shake loose some ideas?
Look at the sample on page 76 prepared by a young
reader before she read the piece.
Do you see how the boxed words "tightrope walker"
serve as the starting point for the map, all other ele-
ments emanating from them? Four major thought clus-
76 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

ters develop from the words "tightrope walkers": in large

circles, they are "circus," "equipment," "outside circus,"
and "dangerous." Note, for example, how all the ideas
pertaining to the cluster circus hang together, each item
clearly related to the big top: jugglers, bicycles, nets,
main acts, and clowns. No doubt, these words stem
from the child's memory of a past circus visit or perhaps
to a circus she viewed on television or in the movies.
 READING WARM-UPS 77

You can see how this warm-up would help a child

ready her mind for the reading she's about to do. On the
level of vocabulary alone, this child has generated some
words she's apt to confront as she reads. Without know-
ing it, she put on paper many of the ideas that the selec-
tion would deal with. In fact, "The Greatest Tightrope
Walker" is about Blondin, a famous Frenchmen who
thrilled crowds in daring circus feats on the high wire.
In 1859 he walked a tightrope across Niagara Falls.
Next time your youngster arrives home with a text-
book assignment, look at the materials in advance of
reading. Using whatever available clues you can, ask
your child to do some prereading warm-up of the kind
I've described here. Then ask your youngster to read the
selection. How does he think the exercise helped him as
he read?
 5
"Just the Facts, Ma'am"
READING FOR INFORMATION

In the last chapter, we looked at how examining pages

before actually reading them provides useful advance
preparation for young readers at home. Let's look now
at the act of reading itself. How do we get the most out
of what we read?

What Is Reading, Anyway?

Researchers now say that we can best understand what
happens when someone reads if we think of reading as a
process—a process in which a reader and writer trans-
act information.
For the time being, we're going to think of reading
exclusively as print-bound. (We'll reconsider this
premise later on.) The writer provides words, sentences,
and paragraphs. The reader brings to the writer's pages
personal experiences and impressions, knowledge of
language, individual attitudes, thoughts, and ideas. In
reading, both reader and writer engage in a kind of con-
versation to work out the message together. Not only the

78
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 79

writer, but the reader as well, has considerable responsi-

bility in determining meaning. Most enlightened educa-
tors no longer regard the old notion of a single, correct,
absolute meaning for a piece of writing; readers and
writers together shape the ideas captured by the words.
The transactional activities involve sophisticated
skills, such as what we infer from a reading, what gener-
alizations and conclusions we draw, what judgments we
make of the writer's effort—others, too, as you can imag-
ine. We learn the advanced skills as we mature as read-
ers, and I'm going to explore those skills throughout
many of the remaining chapters of this book. Yet our
ability to reach those more advanced regions of thought
rests very much on what we perceive as the writer's
essential idea, the nuggets of vital information con-
tained in what we read. In short, we try to see that
everything comes together in an answer to this question:
"What is the writer trying to say?"
Educators usually refer to a reader's basic ability to
grasp information—facts, if you will—as literal compre-
hension. Literal comprehension means understanding
the main idea that the writer is trying to convey and
knowing the essential details that contribute to and sup-
port that main idea. We use the main idea and informa-
tion basics as a framework for the higher-order skills
that advanced readers draw on to get the most out of
print.
A few important reminders are in order here before
we proceed.
Remember our Chapter 2 discussion of context and
the idea that the whole print environment can contribute
to the meaning of a single word? Keep in mind, here, too,
that meaning does not always reside exclusively in tar-
geted phrases, clauses, and sentences either. Reading is
not like a column of numbers where we just total up
everything to yield a neat figure produced only by adding
80 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

one item to the next. The nucleus of a sentence often

appears only when we consider nearby sentences. Fur-
ther, we cannot grasp a single paragraph's full range of
meaning without considering surrounding paragraphs.
And illustrations, drawings, headings and subheadings,
photographs, captions, charts and graphs (typical ele-
ments in a reading selection that children, and adults
too, face regularly)—all these features serve the total
meaning. Each is a blossom offering its special scent to
the garden. Certainly we can distinguish a particular
aroma close up; yet the garden's fragrance is more than
the sum of what each individual flower offers separately.
Next, take care not to think of reading only as a lin-
ear hierarchy of skills. We don't read first for literal
comprehension and then start considering more
advanced skills like inferential meanings or generaliza-
tions or conclusions. Human minds resist easy classifi-
cation, and when we read we draw on many skills, tal-
nts, and techniques at the same time. For example, in
rder to reach a literal meaning, sometimes we have to
draw on our skills at generalizing or making inferences.
To explain them to you and to make it practical for use
with children, I've separated these skills, giving them
separate chapters, but you should be aware that often
we exercise the skills all at once.

Pinpointing Sentence Ideas

None of these complexities (you're used to them by now,
aren't you!) should detract you from focusing your
child's attention on main ideas and supporting details.
These will help you help him tease out the rudimentary
meanings in what he reads. A piece of writing often pre-
sents many ideas; yet those ideas usually relate to a key
point, the main idea. True, a unit of writing may project
more than one main idea, several of them perhaps equal
in importance.
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 81

Still, despite many disclaimers from different schools

of thought, the notion of a main idea persists as an
important element in how educators talk about reading.
You can expect your school-age child to know the term
from her teacher. If you're a home-schooler, you too
should use the term in your conversations about reading
with your youngster. When you help your child with a
reading selection, you want to convey the sense that the
varied ideas in a piece of writing generally relate to a
major thought the writer is attempting to convey. To
understand how the varied ideas fit together, we have to
identify the main idea that provides the overall meaning.
Even if you look at a single sentence you can focus
its primary meaning by thinking about the main point.
Though many different kinds of information are being
conveyed, essentially a sentence names a subject d
tells something about it. (It's the old subject-and- rb
definition of a sentence.) In other words, a sentence
asserts (1) who a person or what an object is and (2)
what that person or object does. Look at this sentence:

Even in the spring a garden filled with fra-

grant flowers is very hard to find amid the glass
and cement buildings of a big city like Boston.

What is the key point here? The sentence tells about

a garden. We know that the garden is hard to find. All
the information about the time of year, the kind of gar-
den, the physical nature of the city, the name of the city
adds details. Certainly the details complete the scene for
the reader; and often we need to examine the details
carefully to understand the key point more clearly, to
flesh out meanings more completely. Nevertheless, the
main point of this sentence is A garden is hard to find.
If we can get a child to extract that idea from the
longer sentence, we are establishing important ground
rules for determining meanings. We're saying, "Between
82 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

the capital letter and the period is a main thought elabo-

rated by details, but nonetheless separable from them."
Children need guidance in identifying sentence
meanings; all too often kids get so hung up on individ-
ual words and nonessential details that they miss the
main point of a sentence. I've seen youngsters stumble
on words like fragrant and amid in our model sentence.
In fact, those words bring little to the basic idea of the
sentence: It's hard to find a garden in a city.
Consult this box to help your child figure out the
main point in a sentence.

Finding the Main Poin t in a Sentence

Ask who or what the sentence is about.
Ask wha t th e perso n o r objec t i s doin g o r wha t i s bein g
done to the person or object.
Strip awa y supportin g details . Details tha t ad d informatio n
without necessaril y contributin g t o th e mai n poin t o f th e
sentence ofte n answe r th e question s where?, when?,
which?, how?, or why?

As with most cases regarding language, these other-

wise useful questions I've suggested above to help you
find details (so that you can focus on the main idea) resist
exact responses. You can ask what someone is doing—but
if the sentence says that a person feels or understands, for
example, or that the person merely is, the question is an
imperfect means of arriving at the answer. Sometimes
one subject in a sentence does more than one thing and
both are equally important in arriving at the main idea.
In many cases you want to sift through details to
arrive at the main point. In this example from a fourth-
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 83

grade Weekly Reader piece on Vietnam, you must use

details to make sense of the sentence:
Tet is also the time that everyone in Vietnam
celebrates his or her birthday.
If you're a stickler for exact responses to the first two
questions in the box on page 82, you get only Tet is the
time as the key idea, if that. It doesn't seem key at all, does
it? Here again, the subject really isn't doing anything. It
just is. To make sense of this sentence, you must draw on
some of the details; the main point is that Tet is birthday-
celebrating time. Thus, you see that some details are more
important than others. (I'll have more to say about major
and minor details later in this chapter.) What you should
realize here is that sometimes you need to guide your
child to use some of the details in order to state the main
point precisely. Be flexible so that you make the questions
suit the groups of words you're looking at.
Let's explore ways to help your youngster find key
ideas in sentences like the ones he'll meet when he reads.
Here's a sentence from a third-grade language arts book:

Tom dashed away to the store with his dog

Spot racing along behind.
Who is this sentence about? Tom.
What is Tom doing? Tom dashed.

Note the way that the remaining details answer

some of the questions posed in the box above.
Where? to the store.
Which Tom? The one with his dog Spot.
Which Spot? The one racing along behind.

All the information other than Tom dashed in that

sentence adds details to let your child know more about
the special conditions surrounding the subject's actions.
84 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Still, the essential meaning here boils down to a boy

named Tom who dashed somewhere.
For practice, talk with your child about the main
point in each of the sentences below. I've taken them all
from current textbooks in use at elementary schools or
from library-recommended books and periodicals for
youngsters between five and eleven. I've arranged the
sentences in the list from lower to upper grades.
1. Airplanes that could fly like birds in the sky were
once a dream.
2. Betsy brought some pretty yellow flowers for the
room.
3. Every day Thumbelina would wash her beautiful
new wings with soap and water.
4. After playing loud music for years, some musi-
cians now wear hearing aids.
5. But no matter when the New Year is celebrated, it
is always a joyful time.
6. There, in the middle of a compound of cages, sat a
television set, its tangle of extension cords trailing
off into the distance.
7. Although scientists have learned a lot about
dinosaurs in recent years, the debate over warm- or
cold-blooded dinosaurs continues to be a hot one.
8. When Muhammad was about forty years old he
had the religious experience that caused him to
begin preaching.
9. Either way, no matter what kind of work he does
or for which goal, the scientist must first know
how to collect detailed data, then interpret it, so it
can be put to use.
10. While the skin color of Africans is generally dark,
it varies greatly from place to place.
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 85

Main Ideas
I want to begin our discussion of main ideas in longer
written pieces like paragraphs, stories, and articles by
looking at a visual illustration. Here's the delightful
cover of Susan Saunders' Mystery Cat and the Monkey
Business.
86 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

If you wanted to explain the main point of this pic-

ture, what would you say?
I bet you'd say something like: Two girls watch in
shock as a cat frightens a monkey up a pole.
How did you determine the main idea here? You
drew on the visual clues, you used your own prior experi-
ence, you constructed a meaningful sentence from your
own linguistic storehouse. You did not simply total up all
the visual information. In fact, whether you're aware of it
or not, you weeded out some details in this illustration,
ignoring them because they did not affect the main idea
in any profound way. Your main idea statement probably
did not address the fact that the scene takes place at a
circus or carnival. You did not acknowledge the ele-
phants standing in the background over to the left—
interesting details certainly but relatively unimportant
for knowing what the main point of the picture is. Simi-
larly, you don't need to acknowledge the tent, the elabo-
rate circus cart in back of the monkey, the starred border
of a circus performance ring behind the girls.
Many of the same cognitive processes used to deter-
mine the main point of a picture or illustration pertain
to a print selection as well. Get your child to practice
framing main idea statements from photographs and
illustrations in newspapers and magazines around the
house. Have some fun by looking at action-packed fam-
ily pictures and talking about the main points the pic-
tures suggest.
Now let's see how these cognitive processes work
when a reader tries to identify the main idea of a longer
selection.
As you know, we use the word paragraph to identify a
set of consecutive sentences about some related subject.
Just as a sentence has a key idea, so does a paragraph.
Often a writer will state very clearly what she intends as
the main idea of her paragraph; surrounding sentences
in the paragraph will expand on the idea by providing
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 87

support or evidence, through analysis, by making gener-

alizations, or by stating alternate points of view, among
other possibilities.
Sometimes writers state their main point as the very
first sentence in the paragraph:

Aside from all its other problems London's

weather is very strange. It can rain several times a
day; each time the rain may come suddenly after
the sun is shining brightly. The air is damp and
chill right through July. On one March afternoon
on Hampton Heath last year it rained three
times, there was one hail storm and the sun
shone—all this within two hours' time! It is not
unusual to see men and women rushing down
the street on a sunny morning with umbrellas on
their arms. No one knows what the next few
moments will bring.

The main idea here is London's weather is strange.

The sentence I've placed in italics says it very clearly. All
the other sentences contribute to the meaning of the
paragraph by providing supporting details.
Sometimes a writer will place the main idea in the
middle or at the end of the paragraph:

It's easy to remember to turn off a light.if it's

not in use. Some people can walk short distances
to work instead of driving. Others can use public
transportation. So there are many specific steps to
take in order to ease the fuel crisis. Not too many
people are unhappy with house temperatures of
68 degrees. A hot shower is just as good as a hot
bath in keeping us clean. We can learn to use
dishwashers, washing machines less often. Of
course, watching less television would not be too
popular, but that too could save valuable oil.
88 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Although the buildings are tall, they do not

blot out the sky. People rush about as in New
York, but someone always stops to answer a ques-
tion or give directions. A person will listen when
asked a question. Often a sudden smile will flash
from the crowds of strangers pushing down State
Street. It is a smile of welcome and of happiness
at the same time. The traffic is tough and noisy,
but a person never feels as if he takes his life in
his hands when he crosses the street. Of course,
there is always the presence of Lake Michigan
shining like an ocean of silver. Something about
that lake each time it spreads out around a turn
on Lake Shore Drive says, "Hello. It's good to see
you again." Chicago is a friendly city.

The main ideas in these paragraphs are There are

many steps to take to ease the fuel crisis and Chicago is a
friendly city. In the first paragraph the main idea
appears in the fourth sentence. In the second paragraph
the very last sentence states the main idea.
Here's a paragraph in which the main idea appears
in more than one sentence:

Dogs make warm, friendly pets. But they can also

be very troublesome. No one will deny the feeling
of friendship when, after a long day's work, a wet
pink tongue of greeting licks your hand at the
door. And watching television or reading a book,
you can reach down over the side of the couch
and feel a warm furry creature. You can hear the
quiet contented breathing of a good friend. How-
ever, try to plan a trip without your faithful pet
and your life is very difficult. Where will you leave
him? Who will feed him? Further, leaving a cozy
house in the midst of winter and facing a howling
frozen wind so the dog may take his walk is no
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 89

pleasure at all. I often wonder why people put up

with such demands upon their time and energy.

In this instance, the first two sentences state the

main point of the paragraph. True, dogs are friendly
pets—and several of the sentences back up that idea—
but the paragraph also provides details to support the
notion that dogs can cause owners some problems too.
It would be easy, wouldn't it, if determining the main
idea of every paragraph simply meant adding up the
ideas of the individual sentences. But even in these rela-
tively straightforward examples you've just looked at, we
didn't arrive at the main idea simply by summation.
Unfortunately, the adding machine principle is too sim-
plistic for the act of reading a paragraph. Our minds don't
work like calculators producing sums. That transaction—
I've used the term before—between the reader and the
writer to produce meaning goes beyond the mere sum of
the various sentence ideas in a paragraph. What we think,
what we know, what the writer says, what the various
words mean in terms of their connotations and denota-
tions, what we infer from the words—all these contribute
to our definition of the central meaning in a paragraph.
Knowing these factors is especially important when
you read paragraphs in which the main idea is only
implied. Often, a paragraph does not state the main idea
exactly: we ourselves must determine it. The writer sug-
gests it by means of the information, details, analysis,
and observations made in the selection. Look at this
brief newspaper piece:

Only thirty percent of family businesses survive

their founders and make it into the second gener-
ation according to most authorities on the sub-
ject. The rest are sold or go bankrupt. And the
statistics grow grimmer with the passage of time.
Only half of those companies that live through
90 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

the transition to the second generation will sur-

vive as a family business into the third or fourth
generations.
—The New York Times

What is the main idea here? Is it About thirty percent

of family businesses last beyond the lives of their
founders'?
No. Although the paragraph certainly makes that
point, it's not the main point. It's just a detail that con-
tributes to the overall meaning. We'd be narrowing the
meaning too much to choose the single issue as the
essence of the paragraph.
Is the main point Family businesses can go bankrupt'?
Again, the answer is no. It's true that family businesses
can go bankrupt, and indeed the paragraph implies the
point. But we couldn't say that the idea of bankruptcies
for family businesses rules the meaning of the para-
graph. It's too narrow. And you couldn't say, Family busi-
nesses do not succeed is the main point: The generaliza-
tion is too sweeping. The paragraph is giving evidence
that many family businesses do not succeed beyond a
certain time frame, but surely those that do succeed
challenge the overly broad generalization provided here.
The main idea of the paragraph is something like,
Over time, family businesses do not have a high survival
rate. To figure it out, you have to muse over the facts
presented in the individual sentences, drawing into the
hopper what you know about family businesses as well
as what the sentences say about them. No single sen-
tence in the paragraph states the main point exactly. You
know that relatives can carry on family businesses to the
next generation in only about a third of the cases. As
time goes on the odds get worse: of those who last into
the second generation (already a very small pool) only
fifty percent will survive into the third or fourth genera-
tion. Maybe you know about a local, mom-and-pop deli
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 91

or hardware store that closed when sons and daughters

chose careers in computer engineering or accounting
instead of the family business. You put all that informa-
tion together to draw the generalization that it's tough
for a family business to outlive its founders.
Determining the main idea in a paragraph when the
main idea is only implied is a critical skill for your
young reader. Much of the reading we do throughout
life involves our ability to see implications and to gener-
alize (see Chapter 9) based on specific information the
writer provides. Not just paragraphs, certainly, but
longer works like stories, book chapters, essays, whole
books themselves, regularly challenge us to boil down a
kettle of ideas into a soupcon of meaning. Every time
you tell a friend the point of something you read or of a
film you've seen, you're highlighting a main idea. This is
not to say that every entity has a single main point or
that we can state it succinctly in a simple sentence the
way I've tried to do for illustrative purposes here. Never-
theless, we frequently must react to the implications in a
larger work and state its essence in our own language.
Use this chart to help you help your child identify
main ideas in a paragraph and, by extension, a longer
piece:

Stating Mai n Ideas in Your Own Words

Make a complete sentence that names a person, an object,
or a n ide a an d that tell s wha t a perso n or a n objec t i s
doing.
Use th e supportin g detail s i n the paragrap h t o hel p yo u
determine th e mai n point . Don' t allo w on e o f th e mino r
points to distrac t yo u from what ma y be a large r issue .
You don't want to see a narrow feature as the main idea.
Do no t offe r a statemen t tha t i s too genera l a s th e mai n
idea.
92 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Let me explain how Saul and I discussed a paragraph

to zero in on its meaning. The paragraph comes from a
book that we are reading aloud with him, James Howe's
Morgan's Zoo. Saul, our ten-year-old, was a little con-
f ed about this paragraph, which starts Chapter 4.

(1) Mayor Thayer was a bald-headed man

with a gently sloping paunch that evidenced his
love for fine food. (2) Aside from his reputation
as a gourmand, he was known to be a politician
who cared about his constituents and wanted
nothing more than to please them. (3) However,
recent pressures from the City Council had
necessitated his making a number of severe cuts
in the city's budget. (4) As a result, his popularity
among the people was in decline. (5) Depressed
over this, he had taken to hiding away in his
office and eating nothing but junk food.

No doubt you've identified some of the difficult vocab-

ulary here, difficult enough to stump many fourth-
graders. You know from Chapter 2 how context clues can
yield meanings of the tough words like paunch, gour-
mand, constituents, and depressed, so I'll leave you on your
own with those words if you and your child decide to
examine this paragraph. However, even without knowing
these words, a child can figure out the paragraph idea.
Even though many paragraphs do not yield their
essential meaning if we simply add up the information
found in each sentence, in a confusing paragraph it's
helpful nonetheless to start by examining the sentences
one at a time. Saul used the strategies that I pointed out
before for determining key ideas. Here's the way we
worked out the meaning of the numbered sentences:
1. Mayor Thayer loved fine food.
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 93

2. He cared about his constituents and wanted to

please them.
3. Pressures forced him to cut the dget.
4. His popularity declined.
5. Depressed, he hid and ate junk food.

What's the main idea of this paragraph? Using the key

ideas from the various sentences, we agreed that the main
point here is something like: Budget cuts decreased Mayor
Thayer's popularity and depressed him. Of course, many
other ideas are afloat here—interesting descriptive, narra-
tive, and analytic details—but the sentence in italics states
the paragraphs essential point. It's not that the other ideas
are unimportant or uninteresting, it's just that we don't
need them all in order to state the main idea. Some of the
details are more important than others (more on this in
the next section). And you'll note that the main idea that
we constructed is stated nowhere in this paragraph.
Again, it is implied. The various sentences hint at that
overall meaning without ever stating it directly.
For more practice, you might want to look at this
paragraph with your youngster. It appears in a sixth-
grade science book:

(1) The greatest problem facing the Southern

farmer was cotton. (2) The once-rich soil had
become worn out through constant planting of
this single crop. (3) Carver knew that if farmers
\vould rotate cotton crops with crops of peanuts
and sweet potatoes, the soil would once again
become fertile. (4) But farmers, who depended
on sale of their crops for money with which to
live, would not plant crops that few people would
want to buy.
94 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Let's take them one at a time. In 1, whom is the sen-

tence about? [George Washington] Carver. What is he
doing? He knows something: the soil again can be fertile.
The responses to the questions tell the main point,
although to know does not answer the "What is he
doing?" question exactly. If you look then at the "detail"
question how—how could the soil turn fertile again—
your answer is that farmers rotating crops would bring
about the results Carver hopes for.
In 2, whom is the sentence about? Farmers. What are
they doing? Not planting certain crops. Now ask some of
the other questions. Which farmers is the sentence talk-
ing about? Those farmers who have to sell their crops to
make a living. Which crops won't they plant? The crops
that people won't buy. On your own, work out the mean-
ings of sentences 2 and 3 with your child.
Now, what do you believe is the main idea of the
paragraph? Can you and your child work it out
together, based on the key ideas in the sentences you've
already determined? Here's what I'd see as the main
idea:
Carver knew that cotton farmers would not
plant crops that wouldn't sell, even though cotton-
only crops ruined the soil.
Your language might be considerably different from
mine here, but the key elements are the need to rotate
crops and the cotton farmers' understandable resistance
to planting crops that might improve soil but that no
one would buy. Here, too, the main idea is not stated
exactly in any single sentence but instead is implied by
the information in the paragraph.
Look with your child at some paragraphs from his
school books or from a library book you're reading
together and, using some of the hints I've provided here,
work on figuring out the main ideas.
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 95

Fact-Finding and Checking Out Details

The main idea of a paragraph or a longer selection pro-
vides an overall notion of the writer's point. Other
details support the main idea, providing the information
base—all the necessary facts and evidence upon which
the writer builds the main point she's trying to make.
Those facts are our link to knowledge on an issue. They
may give a more complete picture than you can gather
from the main idea alone, they may prove a point, show
how ideas relate to other ideas, provide examples to
make ideas clearer. It's not enough to know only the
intrinsic concept that a writer is asserting; we've got to
know the essential details as well.
You know from your own reading how dense with
supporting information some paragraphs can be. And,
as I've pointed out before, not all details are created
equal. In other words, until we show our children how
to weed through the garden of information in a para-
graph, we're not helping them learn the necessary skills
for retaining vital material.
To make the best use of facts and details in a para-
graph, your child should know how to (1) find impor-
tant facts (2) separate major details from minor details
and (3) understand the order or sequence of details as
the paragraph presents them.
Help your child be a better reader for factual infor-
mation by calling his attention to the points in the chart
on page 96.
Let's focus on a typical assignment made to a fifth-
grade class in their language arts textbook. The children
are asked to read an encyclopedia article and then to write
a summary. Summary writing helps pinpoint the reader's
attention on essential facts, and the textbook acknowl-
edges that in its instruction to children. "When you sum-
marize," the book says, "you tell only the main points. You
leave out minor details. Summarizing is a good way to
96 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Locating and Remembering Facts

Have a purpos e fo r reading . Whe n you r youngste r sit s
down t o rea d a selection , wha t i s h e trying t o fin d out ?
Review some of the prereading warm-up s I talked t o you
about in Chapter 4. A purpose stated in advance can rivet
the reader's attention to important facts.
Read for the main idea. Once you can state the main idea ,
facts that support it may stand out more easily.
Realize tha t al l facts and detail s ar e no t created equal .
Some information is more important than other information.
Facts that support the main idea are the essential facts.
Pay attention to the way information i s arranged. Know-
ing typical paragrap h pattern s ca n hel p you get a handl e
on the details .
Actively rais e question s a s yo u read . Hel p you r chil d
frame th e simpl e informatio n question s abou t fact s an d
details a s h e reads: "What does that mean? " "Why is the
writer telling m e this?" Also, hel p you r chil d fram e ques -
tions tha t someon e els e migh t as k abou t th e reading .
Being abl e t o fram e thos e question s relate s directl y t o
stating a purpose in advance of reading .
Use the five W's to ask yourself about important facts.
Ask th e questio n who? an d the n loo k fo r a person' s
name.
Ask the question what? or what happened and look for
an action.
Ask the question when? and look for a date or a time.
Ask the question where? and look for a place.
Ask th e questio n why? and loo k fo r a n explanation o f
an action.

review what you have read. It forces you to think about

what you have read and helps you understand it."
Good advice. But alas, no information, like the chart
I've presented above, assists a child in determining the
main facts and distinguishing major from minor details,
which, by the book's own admission, are the critical
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 97

skills involved here. Youngsters need at least some initial

help in shrinking the meaning of a paragraph to its core.
So then, how do you help your child gather appro-
priate information from this piece on Sacagawea? (For
discussion's sake, we'll look at the first paragraph on
page 98 only.)
First, talk with your child about her purpose in read-
ing. Here, too, the book could provide more guidance. It
asks for a summary, but does not address the specific
task the selection deals with. (The photograph accompa-
nying the selection will help provide some context if you
talk about it in advance with your child as part of regu-
lar previewing activities.) If I had written the instruc-
tions, I'd say, "Read this encyclopedia article on Saca-
gawea, an Indian woman who helped guide Lewis and
Clark in their Western expedition during the early 1800s.
Then write a summary." Instructions like those define
the purpose precisely for beginning readers. Absent
those specific instructions, you're stuck with just the lit-
tle bit on writing a summary.
In any case, it's always a good idea to call attention to
any directions accompanying assigned reading. With the
instructions I've provided, your child, acknowledging the
embedded information on Sacagawea, should be reading
this piece with an eye toward finding out about Sacagawea's
role in the great nineteenth-century Western expedition.
Content established, you might have some fun with a
word map or with list-making about the words Indian,
expedition, or guide. Don't forget prereading!
After your child reads the selection, talk about the
main idea. Encyclopedias aim for density, compressing as
many details as possible in small spaces so; this para-
graph has a nexus of main points. Let me state them in a
single sentence: Sacagawea, a captured and enslaved
Indian woman, was an important guide in Lewis and
Clark's expedition. Once you and your child agree on a
main idea statement, you're well armed to consider the
 Building Bridges
Social Studies
In social studies you are sometimes asked to summarize in-
formation. When you summarize, you tell only the main points.
You leave out minor details. Summarizing is a good way to re-
view what you have read. It forces you to think about what you
have read and helps you to understand it
Try it. Read this encyclopedia article. Then summarize the
article in your own words. Give its most important points in no
more than five sentences. SACAgAWEA, SAX uh juh WEE uh , SACAJAWEA,
or SAKAKAWEA (1787M812?), was the interpreter for
the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific Ocean in
1804 and 1805. Sacagawea's name means Bird Woman.
She was bom among the Shoshoni, or Snake, Indians
of Idaho. Enemy Indians captured her, and sold her as
a slave to a French-Canadian trader, Toussaint Char-
bonneau. Charbonneau and Sacagawea joined the
Lewis and Clark Expedition as it passed up the Mis-
souri River. Sacagawea was the principal guide of the
expedition. While crossing the Continental Divide, the
explorers met relatives of Sacagawea among the Sho-
shoni. She was able to get food and horses that the trav-
elers needed to continue their journey to the Pacific
Ocean and back (see LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION).
Almost nothing was known of Sacagawea for a hun-
dred years after the journey. According to one account,
she died on the Missouri River in 1812. Others have
contended that she died and was buried on the Wind
River Reservation in Wyoming in 1884. An entry in
Captain Clark's journal of 1825-1828 lilts her as dead.
Sacagawea has been honored by having a river, a
peak, and a mountain pass named after her. Monu-
ments and memorials to her stand at Portland, Ore.,
Three Forks, Mont., Bismarck, N. Dak., Lewiston,
Ida., and near Dillon, Mont. WILliam H. GIUBBT

Readers at Work Librarians help decide what new books a li-

brary will order each year. To do this, they read book reviews. A
book review gives a summary and an evaluation of a book.
List the kinds of books you would order for a library. For e
ample, you might choose science fiction or biographies of fa-
mous athletes. For each kind of book, invent several book titles
and authors.

Building Bridges
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 99

facts and to identify the major details. Major details sup-

port the main idea. Details that offer less crucial informa-
tion within the main idea context are considered minor.
Which details are major? Here's what I propose:
• Sacagawea was interpreter for the Lewis and
Clark Expedition in 1804 and 1805.
• As a slave she joined the expedition on the Mis-
souri River with her owner.
• She served as principal guide for Lewis and Clark.
• She obtained needed food and horses from
Shoshoni Indian relatives.
• Through her help the travelers continued their
journey.

Which details are minor? You can deduce them from

what's left out of the above list. For example, the fact
that Sacagawea means Bird Woman or that Shoshoni
translates as Snake are very interesting, no doubt, but
certainly are not essential to understanding the main
point. We also don't need to know the slave owner's
name or the fact that he is French Canadian. These facts
contribute little to the main idea.
Want some practice? Here's a variation on an exer-
cise with some open-ended questions from one of my
reading textbooks. Try it out with your youngster.
Remember to preview and do prereading warm-ups
after you read the instructions.
Read the following explanation about two sports
used for self-defense to learn their differences and
similarities. Then answer the questions that follow.
Judo and Karate
Judo and karate are sports for self-defense. They
began in the eastern part of the world, but now
100 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

many Americans enjoy them too. In fact, schools

for teaching them have been opened all over the
United States and Canada.
Players in both sports use only their hands,
arms, legs, and feet. Aside from that, the two
sports are quite different. In karate, players hit
each other with the open hand and with the
closed fist. They also use the foot for kicking. In
judo, players are more likely to throw one
another. Then they try to pin each other down. In
judo, then, players touch each other. They also
move their arms and legs in large circles. Karate
moves, on the other hand, are short and quick.
Players stand away from each other. They only
touch one another with quick punches and kicks.
Can a karate player beat a judo player? It
depends on the players. One sport is not better than
the other. They are both very good forms of self-
defense. Both aim toward control of the mind and
body. A wise old man in Japan had a good answer to
the question. He said, "We do not say the other mar-
tial arts are bad. The mountain does not laugh at the
river because it is lowly, nor does the river speak ill
of the mountain because it cannot move about."
—Jeannette Bruce

1. What is the main idea of the selection?

2. Which details are important in helping you under-
stand how to do judo?
3. Which details are important in helping you under-
stand how to do karate?
4. Which details do you consider minor details in
this selection? Why?

Again, I don't mean to oversimplify this ability to

 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 101

determine the main point and to find essential factual

details. Please remember that in my attempts to show
you these comprehension strategies, I'm not trying to
minimize the complicated and interlocking skills we tap
when we try to understand a selection. Nevertheless, by
knowing some of the cognitive processes available to
readers and exploring them carefully, you can help your
child practice for reading power.

Noting the Sequence

Last week was your daughter's birthday party, and
you've just taken the rolls of pictures out of the film
shop. They're all great—well, maybe one or two don't
show your child as the true Hollywood star you know
she is. Now you're trying to arrange the photographs
attractively in the family album. In what order will you
present the delightful color impressions before you?
You have a number of choices. You can stick photos
onto album paper any old way. That would surely save
time, but it wouldn't give you an orderly sense of the
party ten years from now.
You could arrange the pictures chronologically—that
is, photos of the first events first, the second next, and so
on. Time-order would help you create a narrative so that
when you looked at the pictures later on—or if some
stranger looked at them—the party's "story" would emerge.
Or, you could arrange those photographs spatially: a
couple of shots near the window here, a few beside the
parakeet cage near the wall there, on this page a cluster
of shots at the dining room table. The spatial arrange-
ment wouldn't give a narrative sequence to the day's
events, but it would provide a pleasing order of related
photographs.
Then again, you could arrange the pictures by
importance, saving the most important for last. In this
way you could build up to the main event visually. Let's
102 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

see, the shot of Julie standing at the door and waiting

for her friends, you'd display that one first. Blowing out
the birthday cake—those delightful photos would go
toward the middle of your arrangement. Ah, but the pic-
tures of your child opening her gifts—especially the new
roller skates she'd been begging for all year—those
surely would go toward the end of the sequence.
No matter which arrangement you choose, by ordering
your pictures you try to create a pattern of meaning. Writ-
ers, too, observe the concept of order by the way they
arrange paragraph information. Sometimes the patterns
are easy to label and recognize and pointing out the most
familiar patterns to your child will help her see how vari-
ous paragraph details fit together. Once she is familiar with
the patterns, she'll be able to spot them when she reads,
even when writers mix or overlap ordering principles.
Did you notice the chronological arrangement of the
details in the piece about Sacagawea? (See page 98.) The
writer tells us what happened first, what next, what after
that. Time sequence is one of the most familiar ordering
principles in writing, and you should help your child
recognize it.
As in our album-arranging dilemma, another order-
ing principle for writers is spatial. A sixth-grader writing
a description of his room uses a modest spatial arrang
ment in this paragraph:

I See the Frost on the Trees

On this February morning in Miss Olson's
room in Spokane, Washington, I gaze around and
see the frost on the trees outside of the windows.
Also I spot the sun shining on the floor and brown
desks. My friend, Karen, is sitting by me. She is
wearing a golden blouse and a plaid skirt with
white socks and black shiny shoes. She has brown
hair and hazel eyes. The walls of the room are a
soft blue, the ceiling an off-white. The trim of the
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 103

walls is a beige color. On the wall in front of me is

a photo of George Washington. It looks as if he's
staring at me with his black eyes. Every once in a
while I hear the clock go tick-tock, tick-tock.
There are twenty-six classmates in my room.
—Theresa Carroll

Note how this child moves from the scene outside

the window to the indoor scene. She describes her
friend, then the walls, then the wall right in front of her.
Another useful way to arrange information in a para-
graph is by order of importance. Here, a writer builds to
the most significant point and presents it last.

Robert Hooke's work in science was varied and

important through the 1700s in England. In the first
place he served as the head of the Royal Society, a
group of the day's leading men of science; there he
urged new tests and experiments to advance knowl-
edge. He helped provide a means by which people
could discuss their ideas with others who shared
their concerns. Hooke was also a well-known archi-
tect whose advice about the design of buildings was
welcome. He designed a large beautiful house in
London where the British Museum now stands.
Unfortunately Hooke's building burned down; the six
long years of work he did on it were wiped out by a
careless servant. Of all Hooke's gifts to humanity,
however, the most important was his own research
in science. He studied the movement of planets and
improved tools for looking at the heavens. He
invented the spiral watch spring. And, of course, it
was Hooke who first described the cell as a basic part
of plant tissue.

As I said before, pointing out these ways of orderin

details will help your child recognize writing patterns
104 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

and will ease her understanding of information she

reads. This chart will help you review the issue:

HOW TO SEE PARAGRAPH ARRANGEMENT

Certain words in paragraph s give you hint s about ho w th e
ideas are arranged.
For time order loo k for words that tell time, such as when,
then, first, second, next, last, after, before, later, finally.
For place order loo k for word s that locate , suc h as there,
beside, near, above, below, next to, under, over, along-
side, beneath, by, behind, on.
For order o f importance look for word s that hel p u s judge
importance, suc h a s first, next, last, most important,
major, greatest, in the first place.

Just a couple of points here before we move on.

First, writers rarely stick to any absolute ordering prin-
ciple, so expect to see lots of overlap, combinations, and
new inventions. Especially in longer pieces you should
expect a variety of arrangements, although certainly—as
in a narrative story, for example, where chronology may
rule—one type often predominates.
Second, several writing strategies have a kind of
built-in ordering mechanism that, when acknowledged,
can help a reader further absorb content more easily
than if he ignored the manner of presentation. For
example, if you know that a writer is trying to offer a list
of examples, you know to look for several items to sup-
port the main point. (Usually a simple listing follows an
order-of-importance arrangement of details.) If you
know that the writer is comparing or contrasting two
objects, you know to expect the objects to be considered
side by side. If you know that a writer is trying to
explain causes and (or) effects, you know to seek expla-
nations, information telling you why something hap-
pened or what happened as the result of something.
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 105

I've listed below a few familiar writing patterns we

haven't considered yet along with some clues for recog-
nizing them. These clues will help your youngster antici-
pate the manner of presentation and, hence, will
improve his ability to understand information more eas-
ily when he reads.
Ready to consider some examples? Here from an ele-
mentary school geography book is a paragraph that
offers a simple listing.

Pattern Clues to Recognize Them

Listing of Details Look for words like "there are many reasons for"
early in the selection.

Look for words like "for example" or "for instance"

or "as another example."

Look for "counting words" like first, second, third

or first, next, last. Look for numbered items in a
list.

Comparison and Look for key words that help relate the objects to
Contrast each other: similarly, also, in addition, further, in
the same way.

Look for words that suggest differences: on the other

hand, in contrast, but, different from, although, yet, in
spite of, even so, nonetheless.

Keep in mind the objects or ideas being compared

and (or) contrasted.
Cause and Effect Look for explanations of what happened because
of something.

Look for explanations of what might happen

because of something.

Look for key words: since, as a result, because,

therefore, so, why, consequently.
106 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

There are many reasons for conflict among

nations. Some of the most important causes of dis-
agreement are (1) disputes over boundaries; (2) dif-
ferences in ways of living; (3) disputes over national
homelands; (4) economic conflicts over matters
such as natural resources and trade; (5) disputes
over leadership; and (6) control of strategic places.

You've already examined a comparison-contrast

selection. Go back and look at the little piece on judo
and karate on page 99.
Here's a paragraph dealing with causes of crime; the
paragraph is organized around cause and effect reason-
ing. Notice some overlap with listing of details as a prin-
ciple of arrangement.

Why does a person turn to a life of crime? There

is no simple answer, but psychologists believe that
some clues lie in the early life of the criminal. A
child raised in an unhappy home, or by a strict par-
ent or parent substitute, or a child raised in poverty
runs the risk more than others of turning against
the law. Some investigators believe that there is
something in the basic personality which forces
someone into crime. Several people suggest that it
is a feature of the genes—something within the
human cell tissue—that determines criminal action.
And, of course, there is solid evidence to suggest
that pressures of present day society give rise to
crime. Even an unlikely type for crime might turn
to it because he or she is unable to face the hectic
pace and style of life our present age demands.

Fact or Opinion?
Knowing how to identify main ideas and key supporting
details is essential for intelligent, thoughtful reading on
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 107

the literal level. As we move up the rungs to critical

reading skills, however, we must be able to interpret
what we read. Interpretation includes skills like drawing
inferences, predicting outcomes, drawing conclusions,
and generalizing, all topics for later chapters in this
book. Here, I want to treat a basic higher-order skill that
leads to the sophisticated arena of judging the quality of
what we read. That skill requires a child's ability to dis-
tinguish fact from opinion.
Not everything we read is pure fact. Simply by exclud-
ing certain details from a factual report, for example, a
writer subtly exerts her opinion on the material. But
there's no shame here; most writing includes a balance
between fact and opinion, where the writer presents
information and offers commentary on it to explain his
or her position on the issues. No writer claims that every-
thing in a written selection is fact. She will stand by the
facts, certainly, but she will acknowledge that the opin-
ions are her own and that readers might not necessarily
agree with those opinions—although sometimes the
writers purpose is to convince you to agree with her.
The issue I'm trying to address with these comments
and with the rest of this chapter is that not everything in
print is absolute, verifiable truth, and the sooner your
child learns this reality as he moves through the upper
grades the sooner he joins the ranks of critical readers.
Consider this statement by someone trying to sell
you a new toy:

The electronic Target A Battleship comes

with a mounted laser gun, motorized sailors that
walk the deck, and over twenty moving parts. It's
the best children's toy around today.

Only certain pieces of information are factual here.

The name of the toy, its inclusion of a laser gun and
moving sailors, it number of moving parts—these are
108 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

facts. However, whether this toy is the best on today's

market is only a matter of opinion. Other children, par-
ents, consumer groups, or educators might prefer other
toys to Battleship A. No doubt, many kids would give
the toy highest ratings for fun and excitement.
You're probably aware that keeping fact and opin-
ion apart is not always a simple matter. Just try to get
two people in the midst of a hot argument to agree on
who fired the first verbal salvo and you'll see that
what one person believes as fact is probably just an
opinion to the other guy. Writers sometimes will pre-
sent as fact items that others simply would not
acknowledge as true.
In addition, sometimes writers get their facts wrong.
The Ptolemaic vision of our solar system, thoroughly
erroneous and proven so by the work of Keppler and
Galileo in the modern age, for hundreds of years com-
manded the intellectual imagination of scientists and
clergy everywhere. Century after dark century no one
challenged Ptolemy's observations and authority.
Sometimes writers do not bother to check their
facts. In other cases, writers mix fact and opinion so
closely that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other
begins. Philosophers and theologians often argue about
the intrinsic difference between truth and speculation.
Most people do have strong opinions, which they believe
to be facts, and represent those opinions as facts.
Despite the apparent caveats, we need to help kids
tell the difference between fact and opinion. Facts are
verifiable truths, statements that tell what really hap-
pened or what really is the case. Facts are based on evi-
dence and are known by experience or observation.
Opinions are statements of evaluations, judgment, belief,
or feeling. Opinions show someone's personal views on
an issue. Some opinions are based more solidly in facts,
or are rooted in more knowledge and awareness and,
 "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" 109

therefore, are more reliable that other opinions. Never-

theless, an opinion is an opinion is an opinion, simply
somebody's point of view and not incontrovertible facts.
Let's examine some statements about American Indi-
ans from Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee:
An Indian History of the American West.
1. In 1848 gold was discovered in California.
2. In 1860 there were probably 300,000 Indians in
the United States and Territories, most of them
living west of the Mississippi.
3. Now, in an age without heroes, the Indian leaders
are perhaps the most heroic of all Americans.
In sentence 1 we read a statement of fact. We have evi-
dence of the discovery of gold in California in 1848. If we
checked sources, we would see that the statement is true.
The use of numbers, dates, and geography in sen-
tence 2 creates a sense of fact. But the word probably
suggests some doubt, and we cannot accept the state-
ment as completely factual. That doesn't make it wrong
or untrue. It just makes it partly an opinion. Because
Dee Brown is a scholar in American Indian history, most
people would accept his statement as fact. But it is still
his educated judgment that 300,000 Indians lived in the
United States in 1860. The writer's education and back-
ground seem reliable, and we accept his statement as
true without much thought. It is possible, though, that
some people have other views on this subject.
In sentence 3 we have a clearer example of the
author's opinion. The statement is not wrong. Yet it clearly
is not a statement of fact. The word perhaps tells us that
the author himself believes other ideas are possible. It is
true that many people would agree that Indian leaders are
the most heroic. Others might say, however, that leaders
during World War II or leaders in countries in times of
110 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

crisis were the most heroic. Others would say that leaders
on Vietnam battlefields were the most heroic. None of
these statements is incorrect. All, however, are opinions.
I think that you'll find this review chart helpful to
identify opinions:

Looking for Opinions

Be awar e o f "judgment " words. Words lik e beautiful, ugly,
foolish, smart, expensive, cheap, worthless, productive
always express someone's opinion.
Be aware of "doubt" words. Some words indicate that doubt
exists about a statement's truth and that other opinions on
the matte r ar e likely . These ar e word s lik e sometimes,
often, maybe, usually, perhaps, probably, likely, possibly.
Be aware of "opinion" words. Some words clearly state that
an opinion will follow. These are words like in my opinion, I
think, I believe, I feel, I suggest.

Look at this paragraph from the sixth-grade social

studies book I've cited from time to time. What are the
facts here? What are the opinions?

Today people are paying more attention than

ever before to the thinly settled areas of the
world. One reason is that the population of the
world is increasing. And, as the population
increases, so does the need for food, water, min-
erals, and other resources. Perhaps some of those
"empty" areas can be made useful for people.

In this section you've had your first look at high-order

reading and thinking skills. Before taking up other key
reading areas, I want to explore the importance of visual
language as you stimulate advanced reading at home.
 6

Words and Pictures

USING VISUAL AIDS

I want you to expand your definition of reading.

Most people define the word literally: Reading is
determining meaning from printed words and sen-
tences.
But I believe that that's too limited a definition. We're
always trying to "read" meanings from our physical envi-
ronments, even when no print is involved. (It's interest-
ing to note the legitimate, though certainly metaphorical,
use of the word read for actions beyond a page of text.)
The point to remember here is that the same skills that
we use for a printed page we often apply to nonprint
experiences as well. Thus when you try to "read" any sit-
uation, you aim to extract meaning from it.
However, the connection between reading print and
reading the surrounding world is more than a
metaphorical one. The roster of skills in the table of con-
tents for this book, Any Child Can Read Better—figuring
out the main point, inferring, predicting outcomes, gen-
eralizing—are the intellectual processes we use almost
everywhere to decipher meanings throughout the day.

1ll
112 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

As I explain those skills and how to help your son or

daughter use them, I'll be showing you the connections
you can make between print and nonprint situations.
You'll be able to help your child apply to words on a
page some of the same mental activities that she draws
on to interpret her daily life.

A Thousand Words' Worth

When your child sees a group of youngsters waiting at
the school bus, or when she watches an episode of Cap-
tain Kangaroo, or when she looks at a photograph or a
cartoon or an advertisement—as soon as she tries to fig-
ure out what's going on, she's reading. Shakespeare
reminds us that all the world's a stage; but it's also a
book.
As you know, I've been making frequent connections
all along between the print world and the world of non-
print experiences that your child tries to read (that
word again!) each day. In this chapter I want to concen-
trate on some of the representational forms that young-
sters meet regularly in their lives. By representational I
mean all those elements that stand for, or represent,
experience. I mean words and sentences here, of
course—our language represents experience so that oth-
ers can perceive it in the way we do. But I also mean
images, such as drawings, illustrations, photographs,
cartoons, tables, graphs, and charts—the visual aids
that interact with printed language (or replace it) to
convey meanings. You know the familiar contexts in
which these interactions occur: package covers, book
covers, advertisements, recipes, maps, fix-it manuals,
emergency instructions, corporate reports, instructions
for assembling toys or appliances. It's a much longer list
than I have here.
Page 113 shows just one example, an airline's emer-
gency escape card:
 WORDS AND PICTURES 113

The information is critical—everyone on the plane

must understand what to do in case of emergency. But
note how few words appear. The explicit photographs
and drawings carry the message's essence. You have to
"read" the visuals to know what to do.
On their own, many of the visual forms I've men-
tioned express complex meanings quite independent of
any accompanying language. As language props, on the
other hand, they clarify and supplement meanings we
114 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

derive from the words and sentences surrounding the

images. I'm especially interested in the way that lan-
guage and visuals interrelate in print, points at which
the two forms work together in the universe of our read-
ing experiences. Calling attention to these meeting
points in your child's reading can help her develop
advanced skills as a reader.
Why do communicators use visuals? Cynics point to
the flood of visuals as further evidence of our nation's
growing illiteracy. People can't read, so show them pic-
tures. If you strip away the cynicism, you will find some
truth here. Continuing in its great tradition as a magnet
for the world's immigrants, our society draws thousands
of non-English speakers and readers every year. If we
have to communicate with those who do not know the
culture's dominant language well, we need methods
other than prose sentences alone to convey information.
To accommodate waves of travelers with limited English
proficiency who rode New York City subways early in
the century, transport planners marked train stops with
tile drawings as well as English words all along the line.
Societies everywhere turn to visual aids in order to
make information known quickly to a heterogeneous
population. Think of the complex details conveyed by
road signs through a variety of symbols and illustrations
that can work independently of words. Along highways
you can see signs without words that tell you of steep
hills, no right turn, curving roads, no trucks allowed,
throw trash here, no bicycles, cattle or deer crossings.
An interesting example of word and visual working
in tandem almost to the point of redundancy is the stop
sign. With the word for STOP in white letters superim-
posed on a red octagon, the stop sign is one symbol in
which word and visual convey meaning together, and
one in which the word is almost extraneous once you
know what the red octagon stands for. If you don't
understand the Spanish word PARE, for example, the
 WORDS AND PICTURES 115

familiar red and white eight-sided sign in Puerto Rico

tells you what you must do. (Of course, you have to
know what the sign means in your own culture in order
to make the mental leap.)
In most airports, train stations, and public places
throughout the world we can determine how to find lava-
tories, eating places, bars, water fountains, and newspa-
pers from visual clues on signs containing familiar illus-
trations: a simply-drawn figure in a skirt represents a
women's room, a figure in trousers represents a men's
room, a knife and fork represent a restaurant, and so on.
So in one sense, familiar visual elements are like
mathematical symbols and can convey information
unbound to a particular society's written or spoken sys-
tem of communication. When your child examines and
comprehends the message of a visual communication,
he's applying reading skills. One of our long range goals,
116 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

of course, is to move him to use those skills consistently

in investigating pages of print.
Other than to convey meanings without heavy
reliance on words, visuals have a variety of other uses as
well. Sometimes we can understand a complicated writ-
ten point more clearly if we see a picture or a drawing.
Illustrations are especially helpful when we're trying to
learn how to do or make or assemble something. If
you've ever tried to put together a baby's crib or to make
a model ship or to construct a headboard, you know how
valuable an illustration can be. When you have to under-
stand data, visual aids like charts, graphs, and tables can
summarize complex material in a comprehensible for-
mat. Sentences to present information provided by visual
data often can be interminable and tedious. Add to all
these the society's conviction that pictures say more than
words in much less time and space, and you can under-
stand the ubiquity of visual aids in communication.
In early stages of language development your child
relied very heavily on visual clues to learn reading. He
discovered that golden arches mean McDonald's, that a
white "Q" on a blue box means Q-Tips brand cotton
swabs, that the white letters "M & Ms" on a brown cello-
phane package means yummy chocolate buttons in red
and yellow and green. On the street corner he would
look at the red and white octagon and at the age of two
or three would read the word stop—that's the moment at
which you knew you had a genius living with you!
The truth is (not to denigrate your little genius, of
course) that your youngster was not reading words or
letters as much as the total environmental context. In
the early stages of reading development, the colors and
shapes of the letters and the format of the message are
just as important as the letters themselves. One 1980
study showed that children misread words placed in a
familiar visual context; that is, the context ruled the way
kids read the words. For example, if you wrote the word
 WORDS AND PICTURES 117

McDonald's in the familiar logo for Coke—white scripted

letters on a red background—your child would read
McDonald's as Coca-Cola.
I'm telling you all this to remind you of how impor-
tant visual elements are in reading. As your youngster
advances through the early grades, and books become
richer and richer with words, the words do not replace
visual elements completely. Flip through your child's
third-grade social studies book, fourth-grade reader,
fifth-grade science text and you'll see a bounty of pho-
tographs, drawings, illustrations, charts, and tables. But
despite this, and for reasons I haven't quite figured out,
kids often neglect visual aids as they read. Perhaps it's
the pressure placed on them to extract meaning from
words and sentences, perhaps it's teacher's lack of atten-
tion in the classroom to the communicative power of
visuals—in any case, children regularly ignore the visual
accompaniments to prose. As a result, they block off
pathways to understanding. One of the most important
helps you can give your child is to get him to use visual
aids whenever they appear in a reading selection.
This list of pointers will help you develop strategies
you can use at home for your developing young reader.
Talk with your child about them.

How to Use Visual Aids to Help You

Understand What You Read
• D o no t ignore visual aids. Many inexperienced
readers think that pictures, charts, or other illus-
trations are merely decorative and, as a result, do
not look at the visual aids carefully. But if you skip
over an illustration, you might be skipping a piece
of information that is important for understand-
ing what you are reading.
• Read carefully the captions, titles, or notes that
118 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

help explain th e illustrations. A caption is an

explanation in words for a picture. Often a group
of words or a sentence or two will tell why the
illustration is important. In newspapers, pho-
tographs usually have captions that name the peo-
ple in the picture and that often give other infor-
mation as well. Captions and titles for charts,
graphs, and tables often highlight the main point
of a drawing. In addition, charts and graphs often
include notes to explain what certain figures and
symbols mean. Look at those notes carefully.
« Try to connect the words that you are reading with
the illustrations. You may look at the picture before
you read, or you may read and then study the picture.
However, when an illustration appears with a writing
selection, readers most often use the words and pic-
tures together. You read a few paragraphs and then
you examine the illustration to connect it to what
you've read so far. Then you continue reading, return-
ing now arid then to the illustration. The point is to
try to put together the picture with the sentences. Ask
yourself questions. What is this picture showing me?
What does the picture have to do with what I'm read-
ing? Why has the writer included the picture? What
does the picture tell that the words do not?
• State visual information in your own words.
Illustrations do give information. Try to state that
information in your own words. A graph or a chart,
for example, puts information in visual terms. This
makes it easier to look at lots of data quickly. From
the information you should make comparisons and
should state them in your own words. Otherwise,
you can miss the point of the graph or chart.

Intersections: Words and Pictures

You've already seen in the last chapter how a picture or
an illustration discussed prior to reading can help your
 WORDS AND PICTURES 119

child develop insights about the selection and can till her
mental soil so that it's ready for sowing written ideas.
But let's spend a moment or two exploring the interac-
tion of words and pictures. First, we'll examine a maga-
zine advertisement; and then we'll look at some of the
formats that your child will face in his school reading.
Isn't this a delightful ad? Its primary target is not
children—I don't think you'd find this in the "Kidsday"
section of your local newspaper or in Boy's Life. It aims
at the parents of kids (like mine) who adore dinosaurs.
Nevertheless, from the whimsical cartoon and the level
120 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

of language, children are not excluded from the

intended audience.
As a means of helping your child explore visuals and
their relation to written language, this ad is a terrific
starting point. What does your child think is the main
point of the ad? What does she think the headline "Cau-
tion: Dinosaurs on the Loose!" means? You do have to
consider the subtlety of the message. Children are very
literal and the caption about dinosaurs on the loose can
be puzzling unless you guide your child to see that the
cartoon figures provide a humorous context. There are
no real dinosaurs on the loose here. Ideas about
dinosaurs are perhaps on the loose but not the extinct
creatures themselves. Talk with your child about why
the dinosaurs in the illustration are on a scooter. (Being
on a scooter is being on the loose in a very contempo-
rary sense.) Connect the headline and the drawing,
along with the short paragraph. Spend time discussing
vocabulary like crafts and prehistoric. See if your child
can determine what Dinosaur Days refers to. As I've said
many times, the world of advertising is very accessible
to children, and we often miss opportunities for build-
ing reading skills because we pay too little attention to
the ads that surround us.
Look now at this page (on page 121) from the first
chapter of a sixth-grade science book.
This page helps me make a significant point. Ignor-
ing the visual elements here robs a reader of essential
information. In fact, many children would simply turn
the page after they read the two prose paragraphs, giv-
ing perhaps only a cursory glance to the drawings. The
one- or two-word labels above the illustrations shown in
test tubes and beakers name categories of materials cre-
ated through the wonders of chemistry. Yet even more
than the paragraphs, the illustrations make those cate-
gories concrete with a wide range of products children
can recognize easily. Without looking at the pictures and
 WORDS AND PICT ES 121

I"

integrating them mentally into the text discussion, a

sixth-grader easily can miss the idea that as further evi-
dence of their great contribution to humanity, chemists
and chemistry bring us nylon stockings, beach balls,
tires, records, synthetic sponge mops, and coated pans.
122 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Further, examining the pictures helps us define

terms in those labels. "Synthetic fibers," "plastic films,"
"coatings"—these are not familiar words to many
eleven-year-olds, and using the illustrations to define the
terms is a significant vocabulary-learning activity.

Being Graphic
The issue of visual aids is extremely important when we
consider charts, graphs, and tables, key elements in pre-
senting complex information in readable form. Key, that
is, if the reader reads them! Think of your own reading
habits: When was the last time you stopped to weigh the
meanings in a graph, chart, or table that you saw in a
newspaper or magazine? I'll bet that you pretty much
ignored the attractive graphics some young artist
labored to produce so that you could easily comprehend
statistical data. I blame some of this graph- and table-
phobia on poor school instruction. Teachers through the
grades just don't take enough time to show children how
to extract concepts from word and picture intersections.
Once again, we see another area in which mom and dad
can contribute to a child's critical reading skills. When
your ten-year old is scratching his head over a social
studies text, a chart or graph or table may not be too far
away!
Let's concentrate here on those visually based print
elements that youngsters face frequently in school read-
ings. Charts and graphs reveal their meanings through
direct word and picture interactions. A chart is a visual
record of information, using words, pictures, and num-
bers. A graph, too, provides information visually, but
with the explicit purpose of relating facts to each other.
Bar graphs, line graphs, and circle graphs always make
their points through visual comparison and contrast.
Tables usually provide columns of information, words
 WORDS AND PICTURES 123

and numbers, using the visual layout of grouped lists

without much further reliance on other pictorial aids.
Have a look now at a piece of what should be a
familiar resource in many American homes, the newspa-
per USA Today. In a feature called "USA Snapshots: A
look at statistics that shape the nation" the newspaper
regularly provides unusual data in whimsical, cartoon-
based charts and graphs, and those can help you influ-
ence your child's visual and verbal literacy. Look at the
illustration below.
To determine the meanings in this bar graph, kids

By Elys McLean-Ibrahim, USA TODAY

must draw upon pictures, words, and sy bols. Certainly

the main idea of the graph is rooted in these combined
elements. The graph is trying to compare the number of
colds that people get in various age groups. Although
the headline and the subhead make a good part of the
point, journalistic style compresses the meaning dra-
124 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

matically, and readers must tease out the range of infor-

mation provided. Only when we examine the stylized
bar graphs do we see the scope of potential issues.
You can use the visual information to help your child
explore vocabulary, too. How does your son or daughter
define sniffles? The cartoon character offers clues. In a
discussion on words used here, you might provide
choices: are sniffles coughs? noisy breathing through the
nose? young people's diseases? From the handkerchief,
the covered nose, the fingers in a familiar position,
youngsters can draw on the visual meanings to supple-
ment what they know from the words and can guess rea-
sonably at the definition. As another example, anyone
unfamiliar with the word statistics would be wise to use
the visual context clues here as well as the verbal.
As with most graphs, to understand meanings we
must create linguistic equivalents of the illustrations,
the symbolic language of numbers, and the words con-
nected to them. When we read a paragraph, words on
the page provide the linguistic basis for our understand-
ing. For graphs and other kinds of visual-verbal entities,
on the other hand, readers must formulate meanings
through their own innate language and syntax. Certainly
we draw upon any words and concepts that appear
along with the visual. Yet, to solidify meaning in our
minds (and to convey it to others) we must construct
sentences on our own. In reading visual-verbal entities
we make sentences in the manner of writers. Our own
language must say what the piece seems to be saying.
Back to the graph we're examining: You need to help
your child create sentences that state the meanings liter-
ally "illustrated" by the visual message and its interplay
with the symbolic (mathematical) and linguistic nota-
tions. You need to help your child state the comparisons
and contrasts that the various bars are projecting. As I
said before, words clearly are not the primary mode of
 WORDS AND PICTURES 125

communication here. Yet readers must use words to

indicate the various meanings offered in the graph.
Let's start easy, looking at data before we make com-
parisons. Can your child say, for example, that thirty
percent of people more than eighteen years old but less
than twenty-five years old had at least one cold in a
year? (A quick math review may be in order. Percent
means "out of a hundred." Thirty percent means thirty
out of a hundred, which can be reduced to three out of
ten.) If that statement, thirty percent of those over eigh-
teen but less than twenty-five had at least one cold in a
year, one of the relatively straightforward messages here,
seems patently simple to construct from the informa-
tion, consider the many props that beginning readers
must use to develop it: the visual representation of the
third bar from the left; the numbers in it and below it;
the charts headline and subhead—and, of course, your
child's own linguistic and syntactic equipment.
To see the more sophisticated messages here, kids
must learn to look at the sweep of information pre-
sented by the chart and not just at isolated elements.
Higher-level meanings emerge when we consider the
bars contrastively—what they mean individually and in
relation to each other. With guidance, your son or
daughter should be able to draw conclusions like these,
for example:

• As people grow older, they get fewer colds in a

year.
• Colds generally strike people at different rates,
based on age.
• Between the ages of 18 and 44, people have about
the same chance of getting a cold in a year.

There are others, of course. The point here is that

with a minimum of apparent language in the graph,
126 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

youngsters nonetheless must construct meanings with

their own language and from a range of visual and ver-
bal elements. By talking about the elements and helping
your child see relations among them, you contribute
markedly to your son or daughter's growth as a reader.
Here's a bar graph from a third-grade social studies
book. Using very little language, the graph provides pop-
ulation data for five major American cities.

As you examine this graph with your child, here are

some questions you should be able to answer together:

• What is this graph trying to show?

• What is a metropolitan area?
• What is the population in millions of people for
each of the cities named here?
• Which area is the smallest? the largest?
• Which is larger, Chicago or Los Angeles?
• Which is smaller, Detroit or Philadelphia?
• Approximately how many people would Detroit
have to add in order to be as large as Chicago?
New York?
 WORDS AND PICTURES 127

From the same book, I have reproduced below a

chart that a nine- or ten-year-old is expected to use on
his or her own and answer various questions. Here the
information is not as visual as it is in the graphs we con-
sidered.

Businesses Employees Goods Services

Phone calls ;
Telephone Compan y 786 Telephones repairs
Electricity
Power Compan y 1,009 and ga s
Shoes and
Shoe Stor e 532 boots
Clothing Stor e 24 Clothing
Supermarkets 1,112 Food
Dairy Farm s 342 Milk
Construction
Company 844 Housing
Bus Compan y 203 Transportation

1. Whic h busines s ha s the greates t number o f employees?

2. Wha t services does the Powe r Company provide?
3. Whic h busines s repairs telephones?
4. Whic h busines s help s the people meet their need for shelter ?
5. Whic h tw o businesse s hel p th e peopl e mee t thei r nee d fo r
clothing?
6. Whic h tw o businesse s help the people meet their need for food?
7. Whic h busines s help s the peopl e go from one place to another ?

In the graph on metropolitan areas, for instance, you

didn't have to look at the actual numbers to draw con-
clusions. You could tell from the length of the bars just
which cities had high population densities, which had
low ones, and how they all compared to each other.
In the chart, however, although the information is
visual, the visual elements do not provide comparisons.
128 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

You have to reach them on your own. Without your

help, your child easily could flounder in interpreting the
information and in using it to answer the questions.
Assure that your child knows to read the information
straight across the line; to use the column headings to
give meaning to the words and numbers; to interpret the
blank spaces; and, perhaps most intellectually challeng-
ing, to compare and contrast the information provided
for the various businesses. You can tell from the ques-
tions that that particular skill is critical. Unlike a graph,
no visual clues here relate the data. You need to assess
the numbers and to determine, say, that the clothing
store has the fewest workers, that two businesses offer
no goods, that the power company employs about twice
as many people as the shoe store.
In this table from a fourth-grade science book, all
the information is numerical, other than the names of
the planets, the column headings, and the words days

THE INNE R PLANET S

Average
distance Length Length
from sun of yea r of da y Number
(in million s Diameter (in Eart h (in Eart h of know n
Planet of km ) (in km) time) Time) Moons
Mercury 58 4,880 88 day s 176 day s 0
Venus 108 12,100 225 day s 11 6. 7 day s 0
Earth 150 12,756 365 day s 24 hour s 1
Mars 228 6,784 687 day s 24.6 hour s 2

and hours. Instructions tell children to use the table to

compare the inner planets. Several questions accom-
pany the table: Which is the smallest planet? Which
planet has the longest day? the shortest year? How
much farther from the sun is Mars than Mercury? How
much longer is a year on Earth than a year on Venus?
Scale drawings at page bottom help children answer the
 WORDS AND PICTURES 129

first question; readers must use the able to frame

responses for the others.
No easy task for a fourth-grader, wouldn't you agree?
Graphs might have presented some of the information
more clearly, but graphing all the comparative and con-
trastive data here might clutter and complicate the visual
presentation. The table permits clustering of much infor-
mation, but we have to make sense of it on our own.
Help your child understand the way tables work
and remove some of the mystery provided by this com-
pact box of information. Point out the column heads
and explore their meanings. Help your youngster form
the necessary sentences for several items straight
across a line before setting her on her own. For exam-
ple, for the second line down, your child should be able
to say and understand that Venus is 108 million kilo-
meters from the sun; that its diameter is 12,100 kilo-
meters; that in the earth's time system, Venus' year
length is only 225 days but that one of its days is as
long as 116.7 days on the Earth; and that it has no
moons. Your child may find some of these statements
difficult to construct, and you'll need to work with her
in constructing them.
After you read across the lines with your youngster,
teasing out interpretive statements for the data, encour-
age her to make the comparisons that the questions
demand. Raise other questions to lay information side
by side. Don't shy away from making comparisons: it's
one of the essential skills for critical reading and think-
ing. Investigating a table like this one will give your
child insights for studying tables on her own.
Activities in which you help your child "read" both
visual and combined visual and verbal entities from
newspapers, magazines, and textbooks should be a egu-
lar feature of your home reading program. It's a ther
phase in your effort to prepare your young readers for
the demands of literate citizenry.
 7

The Reading-Writing
Connection

In 1940, the then-chairman of the editorial board of the

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Mortimer J. Adler, wrote an
article called "How to Mark a Book" for the Saturday
Review of Literature. Adler asserted for his adult readers
what must sound clearly like heresy to parents of young
children. Owning a book fully, he said in absolutely
timeless advice, "comes only when you have made it
part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a
part of it is by writing in it."
I can see you cringing. Write in this expensive, lovely
book I bought Leslie at birthday time? Nothing doing.
Adler pointed out that our worship of books on this
level—physical objects to be revered and respected—is
misguided. We love the thing, "the craft of the printer,"
as opposed to what it contains, "the genius of the
author." Owning a book and simply placing it on the
shelf means only that we have the book in our library.
Truly owning a book means that we have it in our souls.
Now of course we don't write in books we don't own.
Books we borrow from friends or from the library or
130
 THE READING-WRITING CONNECTION 131

from the school classroom must stay intact for others to

use later on. But your child can learn that lesson at any
age—a lesson I'm sure that you try to teach regularly.
Yet, you must temper your proscription. "Don't write in
this book" you want to reserve for books your child does
not own. "Please write in this book!" should be your plea
for any volume in your youngster's home library.
Why? As Adler wisely pointed out more than fifty
years ago, reading a book should be a conversation
between the reader and the writer. Good readers ques-
tion what they find in books; they challenge what they
read; and marking up a book is a way of recording the
dialogue between the parties.
You really do know this, don't, you, from your own
days in school when you attacked review books or texts
themselves or photocopies of magazine articles with
much underlining, marginal comments, or highlighting.
Let's start our youngsters off early in this wonderful con-
versational activity between the writer and the reader.

Yes, I Said Write in Your Books

I want you to encourage your child to read with a pencil
in hand. You can suggest that your nine- or ten-year-old
identify the words or sentences that he likes most, mis-
understands, or disagrees with.
If you've made your child sensitive to the thrills of
the magic kingdom of words (see Chapter 3)—-imagery,
sensory details, and figurative language—what better
way to have your youngster connect with these essential
concepts than by asking him to point out the word pic-
tures from the story books and young readers' novels
that register on his mind and emotions. Kids love the
new highlighting pens, now in fluorescent pinks and
blues, so much more dazzling than the old yellows I
used years ago. Highlighting pens allow you to smear
132 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

ink over sentences and still read the words beneath. Or

try simple underlining strategies; a line or two drawn
under a delightful image or interesting word or thought-
ful sentence; a penciled circle around a key thought; ver-
tical lines or asterisks or check marks or X"s in the left or
right margins. Also, words and questions written in the
margins—top, bottom, sides—serve as excellent talk
points and memory prods when your child returns to
examine the pages or chapters she loves or simply to
talk with you about what she's read.
For informational texts—nonfiction books that pro-
vide facts and explanations—little is as useful for orga-
nizing details and identifying data than a child's mark-
ings on a page. I regret that our current system of using
textbooks over and over in schools cuts a child off from
so valuable a learning resource as writing notes and
comments in the major books she uses daily. Nonethe-
less, we have to be good citizens and zealously guard the
rights of future users by preventing our youngsters from
marking up borrowed books. Yet home schooling par-
ents often have to buy books to supplement the curricu-
lum, and these are ripe territory for your child's hand-
written words, markings, and comments. Those of you
with children in school will often purchase from the
bookstore biographies and autobiographies as well as
nonfiction works—perhaps Brenda Walpole's delightful
175 Science Experiments to Amuse and Amaze Your
Friends or Russell Freedman's richly informative Buffalo
Hunt or Franklyn N. Branley's vivid Eclipse: Darkness in
Daytime (see Chapter 10 for publishing information and
summaries)—and you want to encourage your sons and
daughters to write in these books.
Let's look at a couple of paragraphs that open Chap-
ter One of James Howe's Morgan's Zoo. Note how
Sophie, a nine-year-old reader interacts with the text
through a variety of pencil strategies.
 THE READING-WRITING CONNECTION 133

ON SUNDAY AFTERNOONS the zoo

was bustling. Fathers with their sleeves
rolled up and jackets draped over their
arms bought brightly colored balloons
from the balloon man, two for a nickel,
and presented them with the
admonition to hold them tight to their
wide-eyed children. Laughing mothers
pointed out the antics of monkeys who
gamboled and chattered and who,
when they stopped to look out through
the bars of their cages, screeched in a
way that seemed to small ears to
fracture and echo the sound of a
mother's laugh. The children dashed
ahead, leaving their parents calling out
their names, anxious to see once again
the Bengal tiger who had so resisted
capture, the story was told, that he'd
decorated more than one adventurer
with stripes to match his own.
For many families, for most
families living nearby, a summer
without frequent visits to the Chelsea
Park Zoo was as unthinkable as a
summer without lemonade. It was just
something families did together, like
bowing their heads for grace before
each meal and listening to the radio
before they went to bed each night. Oh,
it's true that sometimes on a Monday or
a Wednesday or a Thursday, the
children might put down their stickball
bats and run off together to the zoo to
134 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

become jungle explorers hunting down

lions or elephants or crocodiles. Or they
might wander by alone on their way
home from a piano lesson or a swim in
the municipal pool to say hello to their
favorite animal, the one who had
become their special friend. But for the
most part the zoo was a family place,
and Sunday afternoon was the family
time.
And for the animals . . . well, for
the animals, the zoo was a family place,
too. They saw themselves and all the
people who worked there as one big
family. And the people who came to. ...

Do you see, first, how Sophie's questions reflect an

interaction with the text, an interaction that otherwise
might escape notice or, worse, might not even occur
without a book-marking strategy? As children respond to
the written word, many questions arise that, without
outlet, can simply evaporate as reading proceeds. Writ-
ing questions and comments beside the words that stim-
ulate reaction allow the two voices, the child reader's
and the author's, to sing side by side.
Notice the first questions, an invitation to parent and
child to discuss the setting of the book. When does your
child think the story took place? What other hints in
these early paragraphs suggest a possible time frame?
(Consider the "listening to the radio" sentence in para-
graph 3.)
Sophie's questions beside the first paragraph provide
a good opportunity to talk also about inference, a reading
strategy we'll explore in detail in the next chapter. Sophie
is adept at using hints in the text to supply information
 THE READING-WRITING CONNECTION 135

not directly stated and has assumed, quite correctly, that

the author, James Howe, is writing about a different time
period from todays. The "two for a nickel" price tag on
balloons that could cost forty or fifty times as much at a
zoo in the late 1990s is a clue to the young reader about
when events in the story may have taken place.
The questions Sophie raises about the tiger's capture
provide excellent conversational touchstones and, per-
haps, suggest a trip to the library to obtain more infor-
mation from books or magazines (Ranger Rick?) or, per-
haps, a National Geographies video. When she writes
"We go to the zoo too," our children's home program of
interaction with text through writing reaches its most
significant point: Sophie has made the events in the
story part of her own life by connecting them to her per-
sonal experience.
You should also note the checkmarks over words—
Sophie liked the sound of those verbs—and the circled
words with question marks next to them—Sophie's way
of indicating she didn't know what these words mean
exactly. But no rush to the dictionary here! Sophie can
extract enough important information from the para-
graphs without knowing the precise definitions of the
words admonition and gamboled and the unexpected use
of fracture. After you and your child talk about possible
meanings to be derived directly from the text, you can
look up the words later, if you wish, as a reinforcing
activity that won't interrupt the reader's flow. (See "Con-
text Leads the Way" in Chapter 2.)

How to Help Your Child Mark Up a Book

• Remember: We write only in books that belong to
us. Putting pencil or pen to a school or library
book or to a book borrowed from a friend is
strictly forbidden. Explain to your child that
136 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

marking up a book is highly personal and that our

underlining or marginal comments can easily dis-
tract another reader.
• Help your child devise a flexible system by point-
ing out all the possible options named above:
high-lighting, underlining, and putting asterisks,
circles, brackets, checkmarks, vertical lines, X"s,
and so on, in the margins.
• Support a conversation between child and author
by encouraging your youngster to write comments
in the margins. Questions and comments your
child writes in the margins at the moment the
author's ideas stimulate thought show a lively,
engaged reader well on the road to critical think-
ing.
• Show your child how to mark up a book. Return
to one of your old textbooks or another book you
wrote all over to help you understand material.
Perhaps a novel or biography or nonfiction work
is holding your attention; if you're not a regular
book marker, get started now and show your child
how you're doing it. Your example is the best way
to teach, as always. Or you might want to look
together at the excerpt from Morgan's Zoo to illus-
trate what underlining, marginal symbols, and
comments look like when produced by an aware
reader.

Keeping a Reading Journal

If your youngster is getting appropriate instruction in
writing, she already knows the value of making entries
in a journal. An informal record of a child's musings
about events or ideas that arise during the day, the jour-
nal is an excellent resource for topic ideas when a for-
mal writing assignment rears up. A quick run through
 THE READING-WRITING CONNECTION 137

the journal reminds your youngster of thoughts that

challenged her, and she can use these as springboards
for drafting a paragraph or an essay for school. The
journal provides an open territory for registering ideas,
impressions, and insights.
A good source of inspiration for writing, the journal
has other applications as well, particularly as an aid to
critical thinking about books. A journal gives your child
more space than the margins of a text in which to
record thoughts, questions, and ideas, written in your
youngster's hand and stimulated by the words and sen-
tences on the page. The extra space for writing afforded
by a journal allows your child to connect the words she
reads with features of her life and inner world.
And that's the main point here. Critical thinking
about books, at one of its most basic levels, is discover-
ing personal meanings. The child who matures into an
avid, discriminating reader learns to make the words he
reads part of his life—what he thinks, what he feels,
what he knows. Strong readers stop regularly through-
out a book to ask, "What does this mean to me? How do
my thoughts and experiences relate to what's on this
page?" And successful readers know that the real
dynamics in reading a book often lie in challenging the
writer—in not accepting every word and idea as
absolutely true simply because they appear in print.
Many young people take all print as gospel, confusing
ink and truth. Of course, many adults, too, accept
uncritically what they read. The fool's gold of accepted
assertions sparkles deceptively throughout human his-
tory. Remember Ptolemy? Holocaust denial literature?
Linkages between intelligence and race? Critical
thinkers have attacked many of these notions, but, teeth
at the throat, they hang on, winning adherents who will
not be confused by facts. You want your child to bring a
healthy skepticism to what she reads and to get her to
138 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

see that questioning, interpreting, and personalizing

words in a book move us to higher and higher levels of
understanding.
Toward that noble end you want to encourage your
child to keep a notebook as a reading journal. Nothing
fussy: one of those lined, black-and-white, marble-pat-
terned composition books or simply some lined pages in
a looseleaf. As your youngster reads novels, stories,
biographies, nonfiction, newspaper articles, essays—any-
thing of interest and challenge—suggest that she record
her personal thoughts about what she's reading. Discour-
age any attention to grammar or spelling. As your young-
ster records impressions about the ideas she discovers,
urge her to follow through on her thinking. Why does
she feel the way she does about a statement or an event
in the text? What emotions or experiences lie behind the
impression she has recorded on her journal page?
A very effective reading journal activity is to ask your
child to copy out on the left side of a blank journal page
brief passages that stimulate him from the book he's
reading; on the facing page, he should write his reac-
tions, thoughts, and analyses of the passages. When he
finishes the book—or several books—he'll have not only
a ledger of his personal thoughts but also a collection of
intellectually challenging statements drawn from the
work. This activity generates a recorded conversation
between reader and writer, a conversation that helps
your budding reader explore ideas openly.
How can you stimulate creative, critical thinking
about a book through journal entry activities? Help your
child keep in mind these questions.

Questions to Address in a Reading Journal

• What does the book title or chapter or section title
make you think about?
« How do you feel about the subject of the book?
 THE READING-WRITING CONNECTION 139

What knowledge do you have about the topic or

closely related topics?
• What do you think about the people portrayed in
the reading? Do you like them? Do you under-
stand their motives and actions? Would you like to
meet these people? Why or why not?
• What events and experiences in your life are simi-
lar to or different from the incidents represented
in the book?
• What scenes and places in the book remind you of
what you yourself have seen at home, in school, in
your neighborhood—anywhere, really?
• How do your own opinions on the topic match the
writer's opinions? Where do you agree? disagree?
How would other people you know feel about the
writer's opinions or ideas?
• Where and how has the writer changed your mind
about something, or at least made you acknowl-
edge another reasonable point of view?
« If you could meet the writer face-to-face, what
questions would you want to ask? What further
information would you like to have?
Here are both a short selection from a history book
and the reading journal entry it stimulated from a fifth-
grader:

In the southwestern desert in the late 1840s,

the U.S. Cavalry needed an animal capable of
covering vast distances with little need for food
or water. Major Henry Constantine Wayne, a cav-
alry officer, decided that the perfect solution was
a camel. He proceeded to read everything he
could on the subject of camels, what breeds there
were, their habits and history. He also compared
the climates of the American southwest and the
Middle East, finding that they were very similar.
140 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

His studies finished, Major Wayne then wrote a

formal proposal to the War Department in Wash-
ington. Eventually his plan was read by Senator
Jefferson Davis who, as a student of history, was
well acquainted with the role camels had played
in the life of the Middle East. It took Davis and
Wayne nearly five years to get Congress to see the
wisdom of using camels in the west, and by the
time they did, despite the fact that camels proved
to be every bit as useful as Wayne said they
would be, the transcontinental railway soon
made camels obsolete.
—Gerald Carson

Its really amazing to think how america

would be different if camels had become part of
the old west. Imagine clint Eastwood or Kevin
Kotsner bouncing around on a camel, showing
what the West looked like in the movies it really
makes you think that the people who lived back
then really were building a new world that might
have turned out different from what we see on
television if one idea was excepted and not
another. My uncle once told me that in the army
they once tryed to use zebras for awhile, but they
were too wild to be usefull. I thought he was kid-
ding but maybe he was right. I should ask my
teacher or look it up somewhere. Where?
Why did it take five years for Congress to see
the wisdom of using camels? How long does it
take today to get someone in gov't to listen to a
good idea?
You can see how this child interacts thoughtfully
with the text by imagining, if only superficially at the
moment, a different course of history based on the
 THE READING-WRITING CONNECTION 141

camel's presence in the American desert. Note how she

links the author's ideas with information in her world—
actors in movie westerns. Also note at the end of the
entry the unintentionally innocent questions about gov-
ernment responsiveness! With these personal reactions
to a book, parent and child will have much to talk about.
I also want you to acknowledge the various writing
errors in this journal entry, none of which is consequen-
tial. Yes, we see run-on sentences, misspellings, incor-
rect capitalization, wrong word use. But the journal is a
private document that is not meant to be shared pub-
licly. And unless your child wants to use a journal entry
as the basis of a formal writing activity, ultimately for
public scrutiny, pay no attention to correctness! If your
son or daughter asks about spelling, grammar, or punc-
tuation, that's a different matter. Take time to explain.
But otherwise, your main interest in helping motivate
journal writing is to have your child release thoughts
and feelings about a book, and nothing will impede the
natural flow of ideas more than a hysteria about correct-
ness.

Read On, Write On

I can't reinforce enough the interconnections between
reading and writing. John Henry Martin, a brilliant if
eccentric school administrator who died just a few years
ago, developed a computer program for IBM called Writ-
ing to Read; the fundamental approach of the program is
having very young children learn to read by composing
sentences and stories on the computer without regard to
orthography. Martin argued that Writing to Read kids,
particularly urban minority youngsters, made dramatic
strides in comprehension and language mastery.
Accepted and used in a number of school districts over
the country, the program has some serious flaws, and
142 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

detractors question the validity of some of the research

data on which it is based. Nevertheless, Martin made
writing the linchpin of reading instruction, and if noth-
ing else, his systematic use of writing as part of reading
development is food for thought for all parents who
want to help their youngsters succeed.
Sweeping through the instructional reading forest
like brushfire these days is the concept of whole lan-
guage, which, as you saw in Chapter 2, attacks basal
readers as synthetic, condemns phonics as atomistic,
and insists on real literature experiences for youngsters
exclusively through reading real books. Critics have
raised many questions about whether whole language
should be a child's exclusive reading experience and
whether whole language learning can adversely affect
children's performance on conventional testing instru-
ments. Nevertheless, the consensus among teachers is
that whole language is a highly successful way of
approaching reading instruction. Many schools and
school districts across the country have declared them-
selves whole language institutions, and teachers every-
where are converting their instructional programs to
suit whole language requirements.
A fundamental feature of the whole language pro-
gram is the use of regular writing activities both before
and after reading so that children can capture their
thoughts and feelings in permanent form arid can talk to
themselves and book authors about ideas that emerge
on the page. Largely rejecting short-answer, multiple-
choice questioning techniques, whole language teachers
see writing as a major ally in the reading development
process.
In my book Any Child Can Write I lay out a compre-
hensive program for home writing instruction that can
easily be managed at home by busy parents. Here, I
want you to think of all the possible writing activities
 THE READING-WRITING CONNECTION 143

that might grow out of a book your child reads with

your support at home:
Write a letter to the author or publisher.
Write a letter about the book to a friend or relative.
Write a playlet from the book with speaking parts for
Mom, Dad, and child.
Draw a picture suggested by the book, and in a sen-
tence or two identify the picture.
Write a new ending for the book.
Write a paragraph explaining what you liked or did-
n't like about the book.
Design a new cover for the book and write a blurb
for the back jacket flap or back cover.

As you can see, I'm not advocating those dreary

"book report" ideas that have tortured generations of
children with their prescriptive headings: plot, setting,
characters, theme, etc., etc., etc. What better way to
destroy a child's original thinking about a book and to
reduce the author's story to a prosaic formula!
I'm recommending instead that through challenging
activities at home you approach writing as a means of
tapping into creative expression and, through self-reflec-
tion on a page about what a book means to your child,
as a way to have him make a book his own.
 8
Finding Secrets
INFERENCE

A olleague arrives at work one Monday morning at

9:30. She's usually there at 8:00 A.M., ahead of everyone
else. She mumbles under her breath and shakes her
head from side to side, biting her lip. She doesn't say
"Hello" as she usually does, but instead, staring straight
ahead, she storms past your desk. At her office she turns
the knob roughly, throws open the door, and then slams
it loudly behind her.
What's going on here? This is a classic bad mood
scene, isn't it? No direct evidence, of course—your col-
league doesn't say anything to you—but you can add up
the pieces to figure out some important information for
yourself. Clearly, she's angry or upset about something.
To reach that judgment, you relied on what you saw and
heard at the moment, but also on what you know about
her usual behavior. No one had to tell you that she was
furious. From her appearance, her actions, her body lan-
guage, and her behavior, it was safe to infer that some-
thing irritated her. You were assessing the scene, and
your natural ability to draw inferences fed you informa-
tion that you needed in order to figure out her behavior.
144
 FINDING SECRETS 145

Inference, Center Stage

What is inference? When we infer, we derive information
by a complex process of reasoning that balances assump-
tions, induction and deduction, instinct, prior experience,
perception, hunches—even, some believe, ESP. Many
people define inference as reading between the lines. This
definition, of course, is figurative. It says that being able
to determine information in this way is like figuring out
hidden meanings—beyond the apparent ideas expressed
by words and sentences. More information resides on a
page of text than what the lines of print say.
You can tell from this familiar metaphor—reading
between the lines—that inference is usually intertwined
with the reading process. In other words, we conceive of
the act of inference as print-bound. Much of the essen-
tial meaning from a page does come to us as cues and
clues in a writer's discourse. For example, we're con-
stantly inferring information about scenes and charac-
ters as we dig into a novel or some other piece of fiction.
We regularly plug in unwritten meanings that the book
suggests to us. Similarly, as we read a nonfiction article
in a newspaper or magazine, or as we read books about
history, science, psychology—about any subject, really—
we gather more from the text than the author states
directly. I'll show some examples of this later on. Here,
it's important to note that we make a transaction with
print: Both what the writer says and what we think he
says produce meaning. Using our own experiences as
the springboard, we regularly dive into the uncharted
sea of educated guesses.
Certainly inference is one of the essential skills that
mark successful readers. A report recently published by
the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educa-
tional Research and Improvement insists that "Greater
emphasis is needed on inductive reasoning and the
power to generalize." The Educational Testing Service,
146 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

who administers the Congressional study called the

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP),
reports that children in grades four, seven and eleven at
public and private schools "have particular difficulty
with tasks that require them to elaborate upon and
defend their evaluations and interpretations of what they
have read." Without skill at reasoning inferentially from
the printed page a child surrenders valued literacy skills.
But just as I asked you in the last chapter to think of
reading in general as a broader, more encompassing
skill than just deciphering meaning from page-bound
words, I want you to see inference as more than a print-
related skill.
I began this chapter with the familiar scene of
Moody Molly to remind you how intimately you know
and regularly engage inferential strategies. In adding up
and assimilating details of the moment, in connecting it
with prior experiences, you adduced information from
your colleague's actions.
In making inferences, you've learned over the years
how not to go too far beyond the information at hand.
Otherwise your inferences might not be correct. For
example, could you assume that the person I described
was angry because she had had a fight with her son?
Not at all. Nothing of what you saw or observed sug-
gested that. On the other hand, you might have heard
her mumble an angry remark to herself about her son as
she passed. Or you might know for a fact that she fought
with him often and that, when she did, her behavior
resembled the behavior she displayed that morning.
Then you might safely say to yourself, "Well, I guess
she's been at it with Todd again!" The point, of course, is
that you've learned that inferences must be based on
both your own previous experiences and the moment's
valid, available information, not simply on vague suspi-
cions or wild guesses. Sometimes we're mistaken in
inferring from a scene, but mostly we're on the mark.
 FINDING SECRETS 147

Have you ever stopped to realize the countless inferen-

tial moments that fill our lives? We sense the signs of dan-
ger or safety as we cross a deserted city street late at night,
we interpret the signals swiftly about remaining or fleeing
when a strange character enters a confined public space,
we adduce what we hope is an appropriate response to a
questioner in a job interview—just to name a few. Most of
these quick responses tap our abilities to infer.
Kids are just like us in relying regularly and instinc-
tively upon inference to shape ideas about their sur-
roundings. What child cannot use the skill to make
meaning from the disjunctive sensory experiences of
life? Infants, preschoolers, grade-school children—they
are all well-tuned little inference machines, their gears
grinding away regularly to unpuzzle a moments experi-
ence. Your youngster knows how to "read" covert sug-
gestions, to use whatever combination of logic, emotion,
experience, instinct, and sentience is needed to illumi-
nate meaning. Every time your child tries to figure out
the best moment to ask a mercurial teacher when to go
to the bathroom, or the appropriate context at home to
beg you for Nintendo or some other costly toy, or the
right language and behavior for asking neighbor Wal-
lace for a big Girl Scout cookie order—in each of these
cases inference underlies thought and action. Even a
baby can pick up on your moods and respond to them.
She uses your facial expressions, your sounds, your
body language to infer your attitude and, quite uncon-
sciously, reacts to it.
Of course, we don't know the origin of this priceless
inference skill. Some people see inference as related
exclusively to prior experiences. Certainly they con-
tribute to our ability to use inferential reasoning. How-
ever, the process is much more complex than a one-to-
one link with experience would allow.
The offbeat chemist-philosopher Michael Polanyi,
who has proposed fascinating theories on how people
148 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

achieve knowledge, insists on an incredible feature of

human awareness that he calls tacit knowing. Certain
knowledge inheres in us without our being able to tell
how we reach it or what its parts are. "We can know
more than we can tell," he says. For example, "we recog-
nize the moods of the human face without being able to
tell, except quite vaguely, by what signs we know it." For
Polanyi, tacit thought "forms an indispensable part of
all knowledge." We make discoveries, he continues, "by
pursuing possibilities suggested by existing knowledge."
You probably have a hunch about what I'm getting
at here. (You're operating in the tacit dimension now!)
Your school-age child—your first-, third-, fifth-grader—
has potent seeds of tacit knowing that you can nurture.
Your youngster already knows how to use inference in
everyday situations. As a parent, you want to highlight
that skill, to celebrate it, and to help direct it at print sit-
uations. What I'm saying is that because your son or
daughter already knows how to adduce information
from the surrounding world, you can focus that skill on
the words and sentences on a page. You're helping your
child make discoveries by pursuing possibilities sug-
gested in existing knowledge.
Thus, you're building on your child's strengths as an
aware human being to empower him with literacy.
Unfortunately, when teachers discover that kids of eight
to eleven cannot use inferential skills in stories or
essays, teachers perceive the instructional effort that
ought to follow as remedial. It's the old pathological
model of education again. Outmoded views of learning
as an orderly accretion of skills through time and our
rigid, institutional school systems brand such children
as remedial, handicapped, disabled, or otherwise dam-
aged. We're ministering to afflicted, as opposed to
enabled, learners in such a model. Crazy, isn't it?
I'm directing you to see your youngster as an
empowered learner. As a talented user of inference, he
 FINDING SECRETS 149

can, with your help, exercise the skill in the regular

reading activities he faces in school and at home.

Looking at Inference with Your Child

Where do you begin? First, help your child articulate
thoughts and ideas rooted in inference. What message does
your youngster receive as he watches unfamiliar people at
the movie house, in the library, at the supermarket?
Observe a scene at MacDonald's—an altercation between a
customer and one of the food servers, an obese man choos-
ing carefully and deliberately at the salad bar, a four-year-
old whining shrilly and pulling at his fathers shirttails.
Talk about what you see. What information can your
child adduce?
Who does she think started the argument? Why?
What do you think led the customer to speak the way
she did? How did the server answer her? Why do you
think she answered that way instead of speaking more
thoughtfully?
Why is that man eating salad, do you think? Why isn't
he eating a double cheeseburger and fries? How do you
think he feels watching what most other people are eat-
ing? Why doesn't he just forget his diet and enjoy himself?
Why is that child crying? Why doesn't he explain
what he needs to his father? Why doesn't the father do
what the child wants? How might you get the child to
stop crying?
Focused moments in television shows also are rich
sources of conversation that draws on inference. A
vignette in a favorite half-hour situation comedy can
stimulate dozens of questions and sustained interchange
about people's motives and actions. Talking about famil-
iar characters in children's shows similarly helps you
stimulate inferential skills.
After focusing on these animated moments in real
life or in media presentations, you want to highlight
150 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

more static representational forms as you move toward

considering inference in stories and text materials your
school-age child brings home each night. You saw in the
last chapter how important pictures and other visual
representations are in our print worlds. Using drawings,
paintings, or photographs, you can help your youngster
further tap her resources as a user of inference.
Look at this delightful picture of a school-age child
and see if you and your youngster can determine its cen-
tral meaning. Inference plays an important part in our
understanding of the photograph.

Copyright © 1988 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Lejeune photo. Stock Boston

Your son or daughter probably would cite the main

point here something like this: "A little boy in school is
counting on his fingers." How did your youngster know,
however, that the child was a boy? Certainly we don't
know for sure. Yet your child used tacit knowledge of
physiognomy as well as hair length and clothing ("Spi-
derman" on the T-shirt suggests—but does not guaran-
tee—that the figure in the photograph is a boy) to make
a determination. How did he know that the child in the
 FINDING SECRETS 151

photo was at school? Your son or daughter determined

the specifics of the scene through inference. Look at the
large institutional window and the chairs and desks set
up in the room. How did your child know that the figure
in the picture was counting instead of merely, pointing
with his left hand and holding up his right hand, or sim-
ply looking at his fingers? Again, nothing captured with
certainty by the picture supplies the response. Your
child's use of tacit knowledge is a key to understanding
the photograph and its inferential meanings.
The immediate demands of real life scenes (like
those we considered at MacDonald's) stimulate needed
inferential skills for us to understand what we're observ-
ing. By raising questions with our children we're releas-
ing those inferential powers and stretching them as
much as we can. Unfortunately, with photographs and
other static visual images, it's easy to subdue our infer-
ential powers. (You know how you yourself can flip past
a busy photo in the newspaper without digging in for
meanings.) Thus, you want to give your child lots of
practice in adducing information from a representa-
tional image. This practice will help in the reading of a
printed page later on.
I recommend that you explore photos, drawings, and
paintings in the books you read to and with your child. Ask
questions: What do you know about the person you see?
How can you tell? Why is the person doing what he's
doing? Where is the person? How do you know? When is
this happening? How^ do you know? We'll examine together
some concrete examples of how to do this later on.
A critical next step in highlighting the importance of
inference in determining meanings is to examine repre-
sentational forms that combine both visual and verbal
elements on a page. Familiar items like cartoons and
advertisements build upon visual literacy and make the
leap into the symbolic entity of communication, written
language.
152 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

To understand what this cartoon means and to appreci-

ate its humor, your child must rely on inference. He
must use both visual and verbal cues. Here are some
inference-based questions that you might pose.
Where does the scene take place? Well-dressed people
sitting in a room and staring straight ahead, talk of
prayer—these conditions imply a church setting as
opposed to a movie house, say, or a classroom.
Why does the man make the comment to the child?
We must infer his attitude about churchly behavior:
People who pray should keep their eyes closed.
Why is he covering his mouth as he speaks? We infer
that he wants no one but the child to hear him. From
the implications of the scene, you see, we must reject
other possible interpretations of his gesture that might
suit other contexts—that the man has a cough or that he
is merely stroking his face.
What does the child's question mean? We must infer
that the man's eyes, too, were opened during the service,
making him guilty of the same offence for which he crit-
icizes the child. Determining that information from the
child's comment accounts for the humor we respond to
in "The Born Loser."
As you see, you can bring your youngster to a higher
level of understanding through your questions and your
linkages between the pictures and the words.
 FINDING SECRETS 153

Putting the Plan in Action

Toward the goal of helping your youngsters apply infer-
ential strategies at school, examine materials in popular
children's magazines, textbooks, and daily newspapers.
The next time you're in the dentist's or pediatricians
office with your child, awaiting your turn with the doc-
tor, reach for a copy of Highlights for Children and talk
about the always lively, always busy cover. To stimulate
inference skills, ask questions about motive and behav-
ior. Try to determine why the children in the scene are
acting as they do. Define the setting, the time of year, the
time of day, if possible. In effect, you're asking your
youngsters to read between the lines—but here the lines
are people and features of the photo's visual landscape.
Here's one cover (page 154) from Highlights with some
questions that will engage inference.

• Where is this scene taking place? Is it a city scene

or a country scene? How can you tell? What time
of year is it? How do you know? Why are there so
many children at the place? Which are the boy
children? Which are the girls? How can you tell?
For which ones can't you tell?
• Why is the hydrant (water pump) shooting out
water?
• Why is the fire officer standing beside the pump?
Why is he wearing boots? Why is he holding a
wrench? Why is he smiling?
• Why is a boy sitting on the front steps? Why is he
holding a basketball? Why is he holding a pair of
sneakers? Why is there a child standing at the top
of the steps? What does he have on his hand? in
his hand? Why does he have those objects? Why
isn't he outside with the other children? Why is
one child who is wearing a bathing suit sitting at
154 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

the curb, holding a doll? Why isn't she doing what

most of the other children are doing?
Why are some children wearing bathing suits?
Why are some children dressed in play clothes?
Why are some children who are splashing about
under the spray wearing play clothes instead of
bathing suits? What do you think their parents
may say when the children return home?
 FINDING SECRETS 155

• Why is one woman standing at a window? What is

she looking at? Who is next to her? Why aren't
they outside in the water?
• One child is talking to the fire officer. Why? What
do you think the child is saying?
• Why does the statement "Fun with a Purpose"
appear on the cover? What does it mean? Who's hav-
ing fun in the picture? What purpose does the fun
serve? When have you ever had fun with a purpose?

Now look at this photograph from a fifth-grade geogra-

phy book. The photo appears at the start of Chapter 27
called "Making the Most of Human Resources." Accompa-
nying the picture is a caption "Skillful farming lets the
Israelis raise crops in the midst of the desert." Your child
might bring home such a textbook reading assignment, and
you should be prepared to help him understand the chapter.
A first step toward that goal is helping your child
156 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

look at the photograph and use inference to flesh out

meanings. You should know that in good textbooks,
photos at chapter beginnings are more than just decora-
tions. They are thought-teasers, and with careful exami-
nation they can open doors to critical thinking about the
awaiting sentences and paragraphs. As I've already
pointed out in Chapter 4, exploring ideas in a chapter or
story before reading it will engage a child's thought and
imagination, preparing her to deal with the information
expressed in written language.
Use the photograph to stimulate your child to under-
stand the chapter when she reads. Certainly the caption
falls short in highlighting the scene's essential features, so
there's not much there to go on. Ask your daughter what
she thinks is happening in the photo. What does she think
the point is? No doubt she'll see the sand and the rich patch
of vegetation. Then ask these inference-rich questions.

• Why are these people growing food?

• What do you know about deserts?
• How is this an unusual scene?
« How do the farmers manage to grow the vegeta-
bles in the desert?
• What are the men at the boxes doing?
• What is the child doing? Is it a boy or a girl? How
do you know? How do you think the child might
be helping the farmers?
• What are the people in the fields doing? Why does
one man have a white scarf about his head?
• What kinds of vegetables do you see? Why are the
men placing the zucchini in the boxes? What will
they do with the boxes?
• What does the title mean now that you've explored
the photo? What does the caption mean?

Help your child derive answers to these questions.

Fill in any blanks she may draw. The printed text mater-
 FINDING SECRETS 157

ial will expand the general notion of "making the most

of human resources," but as you can see, the prose is
rather skimpy.

Farmland from the Desert

nother country with few natural resources, but a
rapidly growing economy, is the nation of Israel.
The entire southern half of this small country is a
desert, the Negev. Until about thirty years ago,
very few people lived in this region. But the
Israelis have built pipelines that carry water to
the Negev, and each year more and more of the
desert can be used for farming. Fruits and vegeta-
bles grown in the Negev supply much of Israel's
food needs and are also sold in the produce mar-
kets of Europe and the United States. The exports
help pay for the large amounts of equipment and
raw materials that Israel imports for its growing
industries. Like the Japanese, the Israelis have
concentrated much of their effort on products
that require technical skill. Important industries
include food processing, cloth making, electronic
equipment, and diamond cutting.

Nevertheless, your child will approach the concepts

in the prose more securely because she has explored
them visually, has connected them to her own thinking,
and has used inferential reasoning to consider the
issue's logical implications.
After you've examined visual, then visual and verbal
materials, you should move next to print alone. Choose
a simple prose paragraph like his one for which infer-
ence is critical to meaning.
After lunch Diane took her bike and sneaked
quickly into the yard. She moved carefully to the
plot of soil under the oak in back of the house as
158 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

she checked to see that nobody watched her. She

leaned her bicycle against the tree and bent
down. All around dark clouds rumbled noisily in
the sky; a streak of yellow zigzagged far away,
and she trembled. Digging swiftly in the hot
earth, she made a small hole and quickly took
two crushed ten-dollar bills from her pocket.
After she slipped the money into the ground and
covered it, she breathed deeply and smiled. She
was glad that was over! Now no one would find it
or know how she got it. Certainly it would be
there later when she wanted it.

This selection draws us into its web of meaning with-

out any visual props like photographs or drawings. Here,
a child must apply inferential skills in an exclusively ver-
bal context. The simple passage about Diane is nonethe-
less rich in inferential meanings. How old is Diane? Noth-
ing in the paragraph directly answers that question. Yet,
we know from her actions (burying ten dollars in the
ground) and thoughts that she's not a teenager, a young
mother, or a three-year old, for example. We infer her age
at about nine or ten. Also from her actions we can tell
that Diane obtained the money suspiciously, although no
sentences overtly state such information. To determine
the setting (the scene occurs just before a summer rain-
storm) and Diane's feelings after she hides the money
(great relief), inferential reasoning plays a major role.
Draw out these meanings with questions such as:

« How old is Diane?

• What time of day and year is this taking place?
How do you know?
« How is Diane's behavior strange? Why do you
think she hides the money?
• Where do you think she got the money?
« How does Diane feel after she hides the money?
 FINDING SECRET 159

If the questions here look similar to those I sug-

gested that you ask for the nonrepresentational
moments, the photographs and the cartoon, it's for good
reason. But you've heard me connect visual and verbal
reading before, in Chapter 6 and in other places in this
book. My point here is that the way we make inferences
from print alone is not unrelated to the way we make
them from visual settings. Thus, we build from our chil-
dren's visual powers to move them toward higher and
higher levels of literacy.
Let me show you how inference leaps to the front in
a typical passage from a textbook that your youngster
will face at school.
This abbreviated selection (on pages 161 to 164)
appears in a popular language arts text for sixth-grade
children. It is an excerpt from a book called The Blind
Colt by Glen Rounds. Excerpts, even self-contained ones
as this seems to be, generally present many problems for
young readers. Insufficient context plunges the child
into an uncertain environment: When you examine the
story later on, you'll see how jarring the opening sen-
tence is. (You can tell that the passage is ripped out of a
longer piece, can't you?)
The textbook editors who have used this narrative
present it in a section on creative writing. Their objec-
tive is to highlight the issue of conflict, which they
define as the problem faced by a character in a book or
story. Two "Creative Activities," listed under that head-
ing, follow the story. One activity asks children to think
about another problem or conflict that the colt might
have and then to write a story that tells about it. The
other activity requires that children make a map to
show the route that the blind colt took.
The two questions fall far short of helping children
understand the selection's meaning. They make unwar-
ranted assumptions, I feel, about what even very bright
sixth-graders can do to engage text on their own. I am
160 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

aware that the goal in the particular textbook is not to

teach reading. Still, to provide so little guidance in how
to extract meaning, to think critically about the mater-
ial, is a terrible disservice to your kids, who have to
make sense of the story. Even the notion of conflict,
which the authors aim to explore, is poorly delineated
here through the questions and comments. It's a blind
colt against the elements making his way against great
odds—certainly that is the issue in the story. Yet the sub-
tle reaches of inference that a practiced reader should
bring to the passage will enrich the meanings many
times over. The questions keep a child from achieving,
and offer no help to stretch his or her inferential skills.
With good questioning strategies, a parent can help a
child avoid the superficial and think more clearly.
What questions can we raise to help our children
understand this story? How does inference operate
here?
You know from previous chapters in Any Child Can
Read Better how to focus attention on essential issues
well before encouraging your youngster to read what's
on the page.
Look at the pictures. What are they showing? How
does your child imagine that a blind colt would feel?
What problems would a blind colt have to face in his
life? How does your child think the colt might have
become blind? Has your child ever seen a blind ani-
mal—a horse, cat, or dog? or a blind person? How does
a blind person manage to get around? How might get-
ting around be particularly troublesome for an animal
in the wild? If you have time, perhaps you might want to
prepare a word map with your child (see Chapter 4).
Using key words like colt or blind, you can help your
youngster probe his tacit awareness of the concepts that
Glen Rounds, the author, establishes in the story.
Remember, I'm recommending all these steps as strate-
gies for use before reading the selection.
From Macmitlan English © 1984 Thobunn, Arnold, Schlatterbeck, Terry story: Glen Rounds, "The Blind
Colt" © 1941, 1960 by Holiday House Inc. C reserved 1969 by Glen Rounds.
 FINDING SECRETS 165

Once you've set the stage through relaxed living

room or kitchen-table conversation, you can guide the
actual reading. Drawing on the strategies I explained
earlier, you can frame questions and directives that lead
your son or daughter to find the main point here. Also,
you can guide your child to extract important facts from
the story and to attend to vital vocabulary like mustang,
rimrock, lunge, floundered, gulley, obstacle, and so on.
But my main objective in this chapter is helping you
build inference skills with your youngster. After your child
reads the selection, use the sample questions in italics.
Comments after the questions point to possible responses
and avenues for exploring inference with your child.
• Wh y was th e blind colt ou t i n th e snow? You
should lead your child to infer that the colt is part
of a pack of wild horses seeking shelter from the
blizzard. It's obvious that the storm is whipping
the animals, but nothing states why the animals
are there instead of in a barn, say.
• Wh y was th e colt thrown into the gulley? We must
infer that the dangers on the trail forced the small
animal to lose footing. There was no evil on the part
of the stumbling horse who pushed him down.
• Why doesn't he rejoin his mother and the other
horses h e wa s traveling with? Why does he fol-
low the bottom of the gulley downhill? The colt's
exhaustion indicated the terrible dangers he faces
alone against the elements of nature. Deep snow
piles force him to drift aimlessly along.
• Why does the colt stand against the wire fence,
undecided? Help your child infer that in the midst
of dangers all decisions seem agonizing, although
we sometimes have to make quick choices. If your
daughter were in the same predicament, why
might she hesitate? Maybe the wire is so unfamil-
166 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

iar as to shock the colt? Maybe he recalls its asso-

ciation with humans and hence is leery. Nothing
in the text supplies the answer, and your child will
be drawing upon her own experience and imagi-
nation to try to understand the colt's motivation.
• Why do the other horses try to drive him out
when he finally reaches shelter? Animals instinc-
tively grow uneasy at unfamiliar creatures, even
those who are part of their own biological fami-
lies. Perhaps the quarters are too crowded. Per-
haps the horses sense that the new colt will drain
their food supply or place other burdens on the
sheltered community.
« What do you think it felt like to be blind in the
situation that th e colt finds himself in ? From
her experience and imagination, encourage your
child to adduce the stresses and strains that sight-
lessness would provoke for the animal.
In discussing inference, I have tried to move you and
your child into advanced reading strategies. Not only
will classroom teachers expect skilled inferential reason-
ing from your son or daughter but also most reading
assessment tests, with their endless multiple choice
questions, will attempt to probe your child's inference
skills straight through the grades. Work on them at
home and you'll be helping your youngster progress.
 9
The Crystal Ball
PREDICTING OUTCOMES AND
DRAWING CONCLUSIONS

Mature readers always reach beyond the text they are

reading. They know unconsciously how to interact with
print, regularly uncovering new meanings and mak g
inferential leaps that connect with other thoughts, id s,
or experiences. As you saw in the last chapter's discus-
sion of inference, a piece of writing almost always
means more than it says, and the awake reader con-
stantly fleshes out suggestions, nuances, and implica-
tions to enrich the reading experience.
In this and the next chapter, I want to talk with you
about some high-order inference skills: predicting out-
comes, drawing conclusions, and generalizing. These
three skills work together because they involve the
reader's ability to follow a trail begun but not completed
by the words on the page. The three skills all relate to
inferential reasoning in that they require readers to
evolve meanings derived from the prose.
Remember our definition of inference? When we
infer, we uncover information that is unstated—hidden,
if you will. The information expands upon the writer's
167
168 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

words. Using what the writer tells us, we plug into the
complex circuitry of ideas by adducing what's not
exactly stated in what we're reading. We dig out mean-
ings, shaping and expanding the writers ideas. Predict-
ing, concluding, and generalizing move us toward wider
and deeper meanings in what we read. Let's take them
up one at a time.

Looking Ahead
An engaged reader regularly looks ahead to what will
happen next—what will be the next event in a chrono-
logical sequence, what will be the next point in a logical
progression, what will be the next thread in the analytic
fabric the writer is weaving. We base our predictions on
prior events or issues in the narrative or analytical
sequence. Making correct predictions involves our abil-
ity to see causes and effects, stimuli and results, actions
and consequences.
Your child already knows how to predict outcomes.
Right from her earliest days in the crib, she has used
important analytical skills instinctively. Come near a
hungry infant with a bottle of milk and watch the agita-
tion. Take a book from the shelf beside your toddler and
she assumes her "story" pose—in bed, under the covers,
blanket at her nose as she awaits a familiar outcome.
As your child grows older, she continues to recognize
familiar actions and their almost certain effects, espe-
cially if you've established guidelines for behavior at
home and in the neighborhood. (Whether or not she
uses this information to her and your advantage is
another matter!) For example, your little girl knows very
well what will happen if she messes up her room. She
knows that you'll be angry and probably lecture her, that
she'll have to clean up before she can do anything else
she likes, that she may be punished, and so on. Simi-
larly, she knows the consequences of watching more
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 169

television than she's allowed, of eating too many choco-

late kisses, of wearing only a light coat in a winter chill.
With reasonable accuracy, she can predict the outcome
of putting her hand out to a snarling dog, touching a
flame, giving Grandpa an unsolicited kiss, submitting
homework neatly and on time, pleading gently for ice
cream on a hot summer afternoon.
Of course, none of the supposed outcomes follows
immutable law and occurs exactly as anticipated. Peo-
ple and events are never absolutely predictable, fate and
human nature forbidding thoroughly accurate
advanced calculations each time around. Yet we have
learned through experience that certain events are fore-
seeable, in the sense that we can guess that they will
happen, or that instances very similar to what we
expect will happen.
Because the ability to predict outcomes is so valued
a skill from the early grades onward, help your child
read better by practicing the skill whenever you can in
your child's nonprint world. Observing the world around
you, at the supermarket or on a walk in the park, for
instance, you and your child can try to predict what will
happen from what you see and hear.
Look at this list of suggestions, ticklers really, to
stimulate your own conversations with your youngster.

Making Predictions: Possible Points of Discussion

• Look at the sky and the trees. What will the
weather be like today? How can you tell?
• Watch children waiting at the corner for the
school bus. What will happen when the bus pulls
up?
• Throw pieces of bread out in the backyard? What
outcome can you expect from that action?
• The letter carrier rings the doorbell. What do you
expect to happen after that?
170 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

• You bring home an excellent report card from

school. What happens next?

Of course, you can pretty much predict what your

youngster's responses will be in each case. Yet, you want
to accent your child's reasoning over any categorically
"correct" answer. In fact, even though experience sug-
gests one clear answer in each case, multiple responses
surely are possible here. Everybody knows how unpre-
dictable the weather is; in spite of our guess that a crisp,
clear morning bodes well for the whole day, you would-
n't want to bet a day's wages against the possibility that
a sudden cloud could dampen your picnic plans.
Have some fun with your youngster as you consider
the many possibilities here. Test the validity of the out-
comes your child suggests by asking her to explain why
she thinks as she does. Which results seem likeliest?
Why? Kids love to get silly here, and you want them to
enjoy their own minds working on the questions. Still,
personal experience is the proving ground for most of
our projections, and you always should anchor your
child's point in reality and logic. Not every anticipated
outcome can be valid, no matter how much fun we have
sailing on the wings of fancy and imagination.
Efforts at predictions connected to personal experi-
ence will help your child practice an important skill
before she applies it to print. You can explore making
predictions in other nonprint arenas as well, always
relying on insights from your child's immediate sensory
world. Here again, I'm talking about the many visual
representations that surround us.
Look with your child at photographs and drawings
in magazines, newspapers, and picture books and exam-
ine what you see with an eye towards figuring out what
will happen next. Use that crystal ball! Let's look again
at Eileen Christelow's cover drawing for Mystery Cat and
the Monkey Business by Susan Saunders for a terrific
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 171

illustration to encourage thinking about predictions.

How will things turn out here?
These questions will stimulate lively conversation
about the illustration:

• Why is the monkey frightened? What do you think

the cat wants to do to the monkey?
• Why are the girls running? What do you think
they will do once they reach the pole?
172 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

• What will the monkey do next?

• Suppose the girls weren't there? What do you
think would happen?
• Suppose the girls succeed in pulling the cat away
from the monkey? What will they do next?

A conversation rooted in these questions will stimu-

late skills at predicting outcomes. You could construct
questions like these for any visual experience you share
with your youngster, especially the covers of new books
added to your child's library. Study the cover illustrations
before you read the book or even look at the pictures
inside. What does your child think will happen based on
what the cover tells him? You know by now that talking
about the cover of a book in advance of reading it is a
good way to stimulate your child's interest, especially if
you have a reluctant reader living in your house.
Draw on other available representational images. Go
through the family photograph album and talk about
what the subjects might have done just after the camera
froze them on film. Newspaper photographs, alive with
action, provide excellent points of discussion regarding
possible outcomes. Uncomplicated snapshots of ordinary
people on the street, formal pictures of governmental
leaders or dignitaries in somber poses, candid shots of
well-known movie stars waving over their shoulders—all
these will help you talk with your youngster about what
might occur next. If your child could stand at the scene
with a camera, what does she think she might capture in
a photograph taken five minutes later? ten? thirty?
Another excellent resource for predicting outcomes
before turning to written words is to look at advertise-
ments and cartoons. As I've explained before, these com-
bine both visual and verbal elements, and even inexperi-
enced readers can draw on familiar visual contexts for
practice. For a surefire activity with kids of all ages, I
like to show the first two or three frames in a comic
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 173

strip and withhold the final frame, asking a child to sug-

gest what he or she thinks might appear there. The key
here is not in being "right" but in providing a logical
outcome consistent with the characters and events por-
trayed in the earlier frames.
Look at these two sections of a popular comic strip.
What does your child think will happen next?

I asked my ten-year-old Saul to draw the next frame

for this comic strip. His drawing appears on page 174.
Our conversation helped draw Saul's thinking to the
surface. His picture shows Archie disguising his nose in
a sock in order to hide his pimple. Why did Saul think
the events he drew in his picture would occur? What
features of the earlier frames led him to make those pre-
dictions? Well, he felt, Archie was so upset about that
pimple that he'd have to hide it in some way, no matter
how ridiculous he looked and no matter how hard it
might be to breathe.
Then we looked at the final frame produced by the
artist, Dan Da Carlo (on page 175), and compared the two.
It was remarkable, you might think, how close Saul
came to Da Carlo's version. But I think not. Most kids
can weigh events and project them onto the future. Go
174 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

through the Sunday funny pages and play the "What's

the last frame?" game.
Once we show our youngsters how well they can
project outcomes in visual and visual-verbal situations,
we need to connect this skill with prose experiences that
do not rely on visual support.
When you're ready to consider predicting outcomes
in print alone, start with single sentences. Use sentences
that are clearly causal in nature and from which you
have removed the final clause. Ask your youngster to
supply an appropriate ending. What does your child
suggest to complete this sentence, for example:
If you read books with very small print in
poor light. . . .
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 175

Your youngster will see (perhaps without being able

to explain it) that the word if here sets up conditions
that affect the sentence's outcome. From the words, the
syntax, and your child's own experience, he may know
that in such a situation eyestrain is bound to follow. We
cannot predict with absolute certainty that small print
and poor lighting produce eyestrain, but if your child
produces a sentence like this, he was using available
clues to predict outcomes accurately:

If you read books with very small print in

poor light, you may strain your eyes.

Now try out these other alternative sentence endings

to see if your child thinks that they too may be possible
outcomes:

If you often read books with very small print

in poor light,
176 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

1. you will not pass your test Friday.

2. you will have to take aspirin.
3. you may not learn the meanings of impor-
tant new words.
4. you'll never enjoy reading.
5. you should play soft music on the radio.
None of the predictions here is as valid as the one in
the sentence regarding eyestrain. Why? Item 1 is off the
mark because many people who read small print in poor
light could pass an exam with no trouble at all. Item 2
makes an absolute statement that in many cases would be
inaccurate: Some people, yes, but not everyone who reads
under such conditions would develop a headache bad
enough to require aspirin. In 3, the light and print size
might not interfere with a determined reader's ability to
learn new words. Item 4 does not indicate an appropriate
outcome for the conditions established in the first part of
the sentence: Some people might enjoy reading very much
under the conditions described. Similarly, although soft
music can accompany dim lights, playing the radio is not
a logical outcome of the sentence, and item 5 is not cor-
rect. The issue of small print becomes irrelevant here and
poses a further challenge to the proposed end of the sen-
tence.
As you talk about sentences like these with your
child, listen to the way he reasons. Help him weigh the
logic of his thoughts as they develop from the stated
issues. Also, encourage him to think ahead to events that
might result from the information given. Explain that
even though he might not know an outcome for sure, he
can use evidence from the sentence to make reasonably
accurate forecasts.
Here are some other sentences and possible out-
comes. Which are valid? Which are not? Why?
People who do not smoke or drink, who exer-
cise regularly, and who eat foods that are good
for them . . .
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 177

never have to go to the doctor,

generally are in better physical shape than
people who don't take good care of their bod-
ies.
are part of a growing number of Americans
who watch their health carefully,
worry too much about their health,
try to convince others to change their ways.

After losing all their games last season, the

Holden School baseball team felt. . .
guilty that they didn't try any harder,
angry at the other teams for cheating,
disappointed at not being able to play well
enough to win.
happy to have participated in a special sea-
son.
that they should play only basketball next
season if they wanted to win.

After you've practiced with these unfinished sen-

tences and the possible choices for endings, and after
you and your child have talked about the valid and
invalid outcomes, you're ready to consider a full para-
graph and some follow-up questions. Here goes:

Sound is made when the particles that make

up a gas (such as air), a liquid (such as water), or
a solid (such as iron or wood) move rapidly back
and forth. This back-and-forth motion is called
vibration. When an object vibrates in air, the
object pushes air outward from itself in a series
of air-waves. When these waves strike our ears,
we hear a sound. For example, when a gong is
struck, the gong vibrates. The metal shell of the
gong moves first in one direction, then in the
178 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

opposite direction. When a portion of the shell

moves in one direction, it squeezes together air
particles in its path as it shoves them outward. As
the same portion of the shell moves in the oppo-
site direction, the air particles behind it are
spaced out. (Of course, when the air on one side
of the vibrating portion is being squeezed
together, the air on the other side is being spaced
out.) The alternate squeezing and thinning out of
air particles produces sound waves.
If you stop the gong from vibrating, you can predict
that the
1. air will stop touching the gong shell.
2. sound will get louder.
3. sound will remain the same.
4. sound will stop.

Based on the selection, if you cause a stick held in

the air to move back and forth rapidly, the
1. stick will keep pushing the air one way.
2. air will not be affected by the stick.
3. stick will create sound waves in the air.
4. air particles will become disorganized.
If you are on a planet with no air and a gong vibrates
next to you,
1. you will not be able to hear the gong sound.
2. you will be able to hear the gong very loudly.
3. the gong will stop vibrating very soon.
4. the gong will squeeze its own air.
You can safely predict here that because vibrations
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 179

produce sound, stopping them will cause sound to

cease. Only item 4 is correct in the first case.
In the second example, your child should be able to
predict that a rapidly moving stick (see the clue in the
second line about iron or wood?) in air will create sound
waves. Here, your youngster had to use her own experi-
ence to know that a stick is made of wood and that if, as
the passage says, rapidly moving particles that make up
wood produce sound, then a stick, being a wooden
object, can produce sound under the stated conditions.
Only item 3 is appropriate here. The other choices don't
make much sense. At first glance, you might think that
the particles would become disorganized, but that
assumes they were organized in the first place. Nothing
in the passage suggests that item 4 is correct.
For the last question, your child should be able to
predict that the absence of air means the absence of
sound. Item 1 is the only valid outcome to predict from
the passage.
The ability to draw conclusions is very much related
to predicting outcomes, and is the subject of the next
section. Once we examine that skill, I'll provide some
guidelines for helping your children sharpen their abili-
ties with these important critical reading elements.

Drawing Valid Conclusions

The courtroom falls silent as the jurors solemnly step to the
oak box. A faint stir sweeps through the crowd as the court
official booms, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you
reached your verdict?" All eyes leap to the head juror. She
rises slowly and clears her throat. "The jury has concluded,"
she announces, "that the defendant is not guilty."
On television or in the courthouses of America it is
the verdict in this scenario that would rivet your atten-
tion. But here I am interested in the jury chiefs verb,
concluded.
180 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

How many times in a day do we use that word and

apply its meanings? The intricate process of thought
and analysis, of weighing evidence to form an opinion
and reaching a decision from careful observation, surely
is not reserved to courtrooms alone. The process drives
our reasoning as we go about our daily business. Regu-
larly we reach conclusions about people, events, and
ideas. As careful thinkers, we try to look at the "case" in
the way that a good jury looks at its case, considering
what we see and hear and think, looking for patterns,
fitting all the information together to determine current
or future action.
Examples?

• You watch a red Corvette weaving in and out of

lanes, taking absurd risks, endangering pedestri-
ans and other vehicles, and you conclude that
you're seeing a drunk driver.
• You hear regular reports of scandals at city hall
and you conclude that the mayor and his
appointees, whom you supported in the past, are
crooks.
• You watch your boss' eyes glaze when you reveal
the persistent family problems that cut your job
productivity, and you conclude that you'd better
not discuss these issues with her again.
• You gain three pounds every time you pig out on
jelly doughnuts and chocolate milk, and you con-
clude that you'd better say no tonight or you won't
fit into the black lace cocktail dress you're wearing
to your brother's Saturday night wedding.
• Mrs. Allen chases your son from her front lawn
each time he runs after a bouncing ball, and you
conclude that Mrs. Allen just doesn't like children
on her property.
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 181

Reflecting on typical events like the ones I've

described above, you can stimulate a level of critical
thinking that invites your child to draw accurate conclu-
sions. When you carry on conversations with your
youngster about daily events, asking questions like Why?
and Why do you think so? and How? and How come?
you stimulate him to make judgments. As you probe for
causes, ask for opinions, encourage thinking about
courses of action, you are tapping a skill in everyday life
that your child can apply to print.
Here are some other familiar events and a few con-
clusion-generating questions that you might like to try
with your youngsters:

• A woman is closing up her hardware store for the

night. She puts different keys into three separate
door locks. She sets the buttons on an alarm secu-
rity system. She pulls down a large steel curtain to
cover completely all the windows and doors of her
shop, and she uses a padlock to secure the curtain
at the pavement.

Why do you think she does what she does? What

makes her perform these actions? Under what condi-
tions would she not have to fasten so many locks and
carry out the other steps to secure her shop? You can
tap the skill of predicting outcomes here. Do you see
how closely it is related to the skill of drawing conclu-
sions? Ask your child: What do you think might hap-
pen if the woman forgot to carry out her safety rou-
tine one evening? How do you know? Can you know
for sure?

• A robin flies back and forth from the ground into

182 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

the midst of a hedge. Each time, the bird is carry-

ing a piece of twine, a twig, a shred of yellow
cloth.

What is she doing? Why? How do you know? Predict

outcomes here too: What might you find if you looked
carefully in the bush later this afternoon? tomorrow?
three weeks from now? two months from now?
• Dozens of cars are lined up along the high school
street, and they pull slowly into the school yard.
Local teenagers, dressed in shabby work clothes,
are soaping the cars and rinsing them clean. Each
driver pays two dollars, and all the money goes
into a large box.

What's going on here? Why are the teenagers wash-

ing cars in the school yard? Why are they collecting
money? Predict outcomes: What do you think they will
do with the money?
Another way to practice drawing conclusions with
your youngsters is—you probably guessed it—to look
together at newspaper and magazine photographs and
to try to reach some judgments about what you see.
Look at this snapshot of a person and a manatee, a large
sea mammal sometimes called an "underwater ele-
phant." The picture on page 183 is from Ranger Rick, a
very popular magazine around our house.
What is going on here? What conclusion can you
draw about the scene? Who is the person, do you think?
What is she doing? Why does she have writing tools?
What is the manatee doing?
Just as in daily occasions or when we examine non-
print representations like photos or illustrations, we
similarly can engage our minds in drawing conclusions
when we read. We note patterns of thought and action
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 183

and use those patterns to make judgments about charac-

ters and events. We put together facts and details logi-
cally in our minds in order to draw valid conclusions.
Like the other efforts I've tried to explain, the skill of
drawing conclusions builds upon your child's awareness
of a selection's main point and the various details that
support it.
Look at this short selection from a simple essay
by Camus. (Yes, your child can read and under-
stand a paragraph written by Camus.) Follow-up
questions stimulate your youngster's ability to draw
conclusions.

Ever since our departure, the seagulls have

been following our ship, apparently without
184 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

effort, almost without moving their wings. Their

fine, straight navigation scarcely leans upon the
breeze. Suddenly, a loud plop at the level of the
kitchens stirs up a greedy alarm among the birds,
throwing their fine flight into confusion and
sending up a fire of white wings. The seagulls
whirl madly in every direction and then with no
loss of speed drop from the flight one by one and
dive toward the sea. A few seconds later they are
together again on the water, a quarrelsome farm-
yard that we leave behind, nesting in the hollow
of the wave, slowly picking through the manna of
the scraps.
Here are some questions about the passage. To
answer them, you'll have to build on your youngster's
abilities to draw conclusions.

The seagulls are following the ship because

1. the men are playing with them.

2. they are angry at the noises from the ship.
3. they are hungry.
4. they are confused.

The "loud plop at the level of the kitchens" is

probably

1. the sound of a dead bird falling from the

sky.
2. the drop of the engine or anchor to slow
the ship down.
3. a man falling forward.
4. the sound of leftover food hitting the
waves.
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 185

The men probably throw scraps overboard

because

1. they have to get rid of unwanted garbage

and left-overs.
2. they like the seagulls.
3. the seagulls are hungry.
4. the seagulls annoy them.

How did you manage with these questions? Let's

take them up in turn. From the behavior of the birds at
the end of the paragraph, we know that they are hungry.
The phrase "picking through the scraps," among other
clues, allows us to draw that conclusion.
Even if your child doesn't know the meaning of
manna (here it means the sudden, unexpected source of
material pleasure or gain), he can conclude that item 3
is correct. True, the writer tells us that the seagulls
whirled in confusion, but that's not the reason they
were following the ship. We have to rule out item 4.
And nothing in the selection suggests that either 1 or 2
is correct.
What conclusion do you draw about the loud plop
side the kitchen level? Certainly that action and the
alarm and the birds' subsequent seaward diving make us
conclude that the noise is scraps of food hitting the
waves. Only item 1 works here.
In the third question we reach our conclusion by
reflecting on the men's behavior. Nothing in the selec-
tion tells how they feel about the birds: we don't know
whether the men like the gulls or are annoyed by them.
We also don't know if the men think the seagulls are
hungry or even if the men care that the seagulls may be
hungry, for that matter. We have to reject all the choices
but item 1. The men are dumping unwanted garbage
and leftovers into th sea.
186 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Drawing Conclusions and

Predicting Outcomes
I promised to provide some practical hints for helping
children predict outcomes and draw conclusions.
Remember that before turning to print, we practice
these skills by exploring our child's world, talking about
shared moments, familiar scenes, photographs, illustra-
tions, television programs, and so on. This practice sets
the right conversational tone about the books we read
later on with our youngsters and the various selections
they bring us from their own reading.

How to Predict Outcomes and Draw Valid

Conclusions
Predicting means guessing at what happens next
based on what happened before.
Concluding means determining some logical out-
growth or forming some opinion or decision.
To predict accurately and to form appropriate con-
clusions, draw on your own experience. Use clues in the
passage; test your conclusions and proposed outcomes
against what you know from experience and what you
have already read.

• Be aware of the main idea of the selection. Think

about the action being described. What events
have occurred? What events logically should fol-
low the events you've read about? Do you see a
pattern or sequence? Does the sequence suggest
any results that may not be stated by the writer?
8
Pay attention to the vocabulary. Use sentence
clues to figure out meanings, but don't get hung
up on words whose meanings you don't know
exactly. As I pointed out before, you could get by
nicely without knowing what the word manna
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 187

meant in the paragraph about the gulls. With a lit-

tle time, however, a child could use clues in the
passage to figure out that manna has something to
do with food, although he might have missed the
nuance of miracle.
Think about the people described in the selection.
What do their character and previous actions sug-
gest about what they might do next? Often charac-
ters in children's books are predictable in that the
authors show them acting again and again from
the same character trait or inclination. Help your
child identify the thoughts, feelings, and actions of
characters in order to figure out what the charac-
ters might do next.
Think about what you would do, or what would
happen to you, if you were in the circumstances
being described.
Ask yourself after you read: What will happen as a
result of these actions or events?
Consider the overall picture suggested in the read-
ing. Does it point you in one direction or the
other? Which details back up your ideas?
Before you make a final judgment—whether you
are drawing a conclusion or predicting an out-
come—be sure that the reading supplies enough
evidence to support your judgment. Do not build
your conclusions and predictions exclusively on
your own opinions, likes, and dislikes. Of course,
use those experiences as the starting point for
your thinking. But always test your conclusions
and predictions against evidence in the selection
you're reading. If you feel that the evidence is not
sufficient, what kind of information would you
need to reach an accurate conclusion or to guess
at what might happen next? It's always all right to
say that you're just not sure of the outcome.
188 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Let's try to put these concluding and predicting tal-

ents to work together. Examine these passages and use
the succeeding questions to guide conversation about
the skills we've looked at in this chapter. Both pieces,
incidentally, are related to science—a tough area for
many elementary school kids and, unfortunately, the
one their teachers are most likely to set youngsters
learning on their own.
The second selection that follows, the piece on
dinosaurs, is more difficult than the first. Nevertheless,
because the content is so compelling for most kids, you
should try it with your youngster. Look first at the
vocabulary question (question 1) so that you can help
your child explore some difficult words through context
clues (see Chapter 2) or through any other available
means.

The resolving power of an optical instrument,

such as a telescope or a microscope, is the mea-
surement of its ability to distinguish clearly
between two different things. Anton van
Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) is listed in the Bio-
graphical Dictionary of Outstanding Men
because he was the first to arrange simple lenses
as a primitive microscope and call the attention
of the Royal Society of London to living forms in
a drop of water. Up to that moment, his useful-
ness to society had been as a family man and
custodian. Leeuwenhoek's invention helped the
human eye to distinguish clearly among living
protozoa, very small single cell animals. This was
a simple beginning that led to more sophisticated
generations of instruments and incredible
advances in science and medicine.
1. The main point of this selection is
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 189

a. to define resolving power

b. to discuss Leeuwenhoek's contribution to
improving the resolving power of optical instru-
ments.
c. to explain the ability of the human eye to see
one-celled animals.
d. to call attention to the Royal Society of London
to living forms in a drop of water.
2. We may conclude from this selection that the bet-
ter the resolving power of a microscope or tele-
scope,
a. the more sophisticated the instrument.
b. the more important Leeuwenhoek's family life.
c. the less we need to rely upon the human eye in
scientific observations.
c. the more protozoa in a drop of water.
3. It is correct to assume that a direct outcome of
Leeuwenhoek's primitive microscope was
a. the growth of the Royal Society of London.
b. his increased usefulness as a family man and
custodian.
c. his improved ability to arrange simple lenses.
d. high-powered microscopes and telescopes in
use today.

Correct answers here are: 1. b; 2. a; 3. d.

It is interesting to compare the brain of a very

large dinosaur with the brain of an equally large
modern mammal like the whale. The largest
dinosaurs weighed as much as 100 tons. Whales
also weigh as much as 100 tons and are, as the
dinosaurs were in their time, the largest animals
alive today. The brain of a large whale is a huge
mass of grey matter, nearly a foot and a half
190 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

across, that weighs about 20 pounds. The posses-

sor of this mammoth brain is an intelligent ani-
mal. Some whales have a remarkable memory
capacity; they can memorize a complex
whalesong that goes on for hours, and repeat it
note for note a year later. The brains of the
largest dinosaurs, on the other hand, such as
Supersaurus, were only the size of an orange,
and weighed about half a pound. Yet that small
amount of grey matter had to exercise control
over the same 100-ton bulk that is commanded
by the 20-pound brain of the largest whales.
Scientists who specialize in the study of
brains and intelligence have plotted charts of
brain weight against body weight for many kinds
of animals. They find that when the ratio of brain
weight to body weight is as small as it was in
Supersaurus, the behavior of the animal is
stereotyped, automatic, and unintelligent. The
reason is clear: A large body has many large mus-
cles and needs many nerve fibers for its coordi-
nation. When the large body is controlled by a
small brain, every neuron in this brain must be
used to move the body through its basic survival
routines: find food! flee from the predator! and
so on.
Supersaurus was not an unusually stupid
dinosaur, and dinosaurs were not unusually stu-
pid reptiles. In fact, dinosaurs had normal intelli-
gence for reptiles. Of course, there was a spread
in braininess among the dinosaurs. But the same
is true among modern mammals; plant-eaters
like the cow are among the least intelligent mam-
mals, while alert carnivores like the wolf are
among the most intelligent. However, the
dinosaurs as a group were generally less intelli-
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 191

gent than the early mammals as a group. This

held then, and still holds today, all the way up
and down the scale of sizes. A little lizard, for
example, has a considerably smaller brain than a
chipmunk of the same size and displays a far less
flexible repertoire.
1. Without using a dictionary, determine definitions
of the following words. Reread the sentences in
which each word appears for clues to their correct
meanings.
a. possessor
b. capacity
c. stereotyped
d. neuron
e. predator
f. carnivores.
g. repertoire _
2. The main idea of the passage is that
a. dinosaurs were much smarter than most people
think.
b. whales have brains that weigh twenty pounds.
c. dinosaurs were about as smart as other reptiles.
d. dinosaurs and other reptiles are not as smart as
mammals.
3. A Supersaurus and a modern whale
a. have about the same live weight.
b. have about equal intelligence.
c. have brains the size of oranges.
d. live underwater.
4. We may conclude that carnivores
a. do not eat reptiles.
b. are smarter than plant eaters.
c. are stronger, but not smarter, than their prey.
d. display stereotyped behavior.
192 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

5. Animals with small brains in relation to their body

sizes
a. cannot remember much.
b. cannot survive well.
c. are almost always reptiles.
d. display flexible behavior.
6. From the information presented in the selection
you can predict that lizards probably
a. have better memories than chipmunks.
b. adapt quickly to changes in their environment.
c. have a less complex signal system than chip-
munks.
d. will outsmart a wolf.
7. We may predict that, if a whale finds an obstacle
in its way, it will
a. search for several ways to get around it.
b. not remember the obstacle for long.
c. flee.
d. keep trying to swim directly through the obsta-
cle.
8. We may conclude that a living Supersaurus
a. used many different methods to defeat its ene-
mies.
b. could not control its muscles.
c. could not adapt easily to changes in its environ-
ment.
d. evolved a complicated signal system.
9. We may conclude from the article that
a. turkeys would be smarter than eagles.
b. eagles would be smarter than turkeys.
c. a big dog will always be smarter than a small
dog.
d. large lizards would be smarter than turkeys.
10. We may also conclude that
 THE CRYSTAL BALL 193

a. animals with bigger brains are always smarter.

b. dinosaurs were the stupidest animals to walk
the earth.
c. all mammals are carnivores.
d. animals range in intelligence.

Answers? Here are definitions for the highlighted

vocabulary:
A possessor is someone who has or owns
something.
Capacity is the amount something can hold.
Stereotyped means made to fit an overly sim-
ple idea or belief.
A neuron is a nerve fiber.
A predator is an animal that hunts other ani-
mals.
Carnivores are meat eaters.
A repertoire is a choice of behaviors.
Here are correct choices for the remaining ques-
tions:
2. d; 3. a; 4. b; 5. a; 6. c; 7. a; 8. c; 9. b; 10. d.

How did you do? Being aware of outcomes and con-

clusions will help your child interact thoughtfully with
print. Use your crystal ball to peek beyond what you've
read.
 10
Faraway iews
GENERALIZING

It's been a rough Tuesday, especially in your dealings

with teenagers. A mother of two young kids yourself,
you expect a modicum of respect from kids ten, fifteen,
or twenty years younger than you are. But today, no
such luck. In Stop 'n Shop a nineteen year old stock boy
packing apple sauce jars nearly knocks you over as he
hoists a huge carton from a dolly to the floor. Of course,
he gives you no apology.
At Burger King, the order taker sneers at you when
you present a fifty dollar bill; she mumbles a snide
remark under her breath about your confusing a fast
food store with a bank.
The gas jockey at a new Exxon station gives you fif-
teen dollars' worth of premium when you ordered ten
dollars' worth of regular and zealously begins a shouting
match, demanding that you pay up because you should
have been sure that he heard what you wanted.
A few other similar experiences have set your teeth
on edge. Kids, you grumble. Deteriorating in manners.
No good, today's generation. No respect for their

194
 FARAWAY VIEWS 195

elders. Self-centered. Care only about their own needs

and feelings.

Seeing the Large Picture

If you can remember formulating principles like these
or others like them, congratulate yourself as a high-
order thinker. Even though the thoughts themselves
might result from unhappy experiences, you've used
your good brain power to establish a broader context for
your experiences. Go ahead and pat yourself on the
back!
What you've done is to exercise another major strat-
egy that marks mature thought: generalizing. The ability
to generalize helps you interpret your surroundings and
helps you probe deeper meanings from it. It allows you
to see relations between specific circumstances and
more abstract conditions. Psychologists say that the
process of generalizing is a process of discovery; when
you see similar elements in diverse circumstances you
take a conceptual leap forward in your thinking.
To some, one of the primary goals of education is to
create thinkers who know how to generalize. As he
advances through the grades in school, or in a home
education program, print material will challenge your
youngster more and more to generalize from what he
reads.
Let's look at the issue in a little more detail. When
you generalize, you extend meanings beyond the spe-
cific conditions at hand. Generalizing allows you to
apply what you've experienced to an expanded context.
You use facts, details, information, and ideas; from par-
ticular information you generate broad concepts and
principles.
As I've said before, the skills we're looking at in this
chapter and the two before it are connected quite directly.
196 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Generalizing is related to making inferences; making

inferences relates to predicting outcomes and drawing
conclusions; and all four connect with each other, corners
in a square of higher order thinking. True, not everyone
defines these skills in the way I do. Many teachers prefer
to see the skills all as variations of inference and not
worth distinguishing. Nevertheless, I believe that it is very
useful to examine the concepts separately.
Let's try to do just that by returning to your miser-
able day as an invader in a teenage world. You might
infer ("read between the lines") on a case by case
basis, some particular details that help you under-
stand the actions of each offender. Isn't that the Jones
boy with those lethal apple sauce jars? In a home with
divorce and illness and barely enough money to go
around—and just last week the boy's sister taken to
the hospital—well, maybe that explains the young-
ster's actions. How could a kid with such problems
concentrate on anything, you might wonder. Your rea-
sons don't justify the boy's action in the aisle, of
course, but perhaps they do explain it. Remember,
inference is often guesswork: You're exploring cur-
rents beneath the surface to satisfy your understand-
ing. And, depending on how angry you are (and how
fair you want to be intellectually), you try not to go
beyond the available information.
When you conclude, on the other hand, you add up
impressions and engage in thought that helps you see
consequences, causes, and effects. What can you con-
clude about Terrible Tuesday on the mean streets? One
valid conclusion is, "I got no respect from any of the
kids I dealt with today." (So you sound a bit like Rodney
Dangerfield. Nobody's listening.) Or, you might draw
this conclusion, depending on how paranoid you felt:
"The teens I had to deal with today hated me." You
wouldn't conclude—though you might like to in order to
 FARAWAY VIEWS 197

justify your anger—"All the teens I dealt with today were

brain dead!" In your mind you've summed up the expe-
riences that you had and you drew conclusions based on
those experiences. Apparently some conclusions are
more valid than others.
When you generalize, you up the ante one more chip
in the critical thinking game. You use your experiences
to derive broad rules or principles that might apply in
other related contexts. From particulars you develop
propositions: "Kids today don't show adults any
respect"; "Teenagers don't like anyone over thirty-five";
"The younger generation doesn't think the way our
generation thinks." Notice the sweep of these state-
ments, rooted in the inferences you made and the con-
clusions you drew. Each statement proposes a kind of
axiom or tenet.
These tenets that you created from your experiences are
not all equally appropriate, mind you. Some are too broad,
some too unyielding in stating their conditions. You know
that, of course. If you really had to think carefully about
your "rules" here, you'd probably make modifications, add
disclaimers, perhaps soften some of the absolutes.
The chart below categorizes the statements we've
examined:

INFERENCE CONCLUSION GENERALIZATION

Something is I got no respect Kids don't show
bothering the from the teens adults any respect
Jones boy today. I dealt with today, these days.

Laid side by side, these statements are clearly inter-

related and look similar in some respects. Again, I'm not
suggesting any rigid definitions for the three thinking
strategies, just that you keep in mind the different quali-
ties of thought that each one implies.
198 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Let's have some fun by looking at a few outcomes

and conclusions that we used to illustrate concepts in
the last chapter and lay them alongside a series of gener-
alizations. Based on your knowledge and experience,
which generalizations do you think are valid? Which are
not valid? Why? Your ten- or eleven-year-old can investi-
gate these with you; talk about the statements and see if
the two of you agree or disagree.

Conclusion: You hear regular reports of scandals at city

hall and you conclude that the major and his
appointees, whom you supported in the past, are crooks.

Generalizations (Which Are Valid?):

1. All politicians are dishonest.
2. Politicians can have trouble resisting graft and
corruption.
3. City politics everywhere is basically crooked.
. Scandals can force people to withdraw support
from strong and popular governments.
5. Scandals always defeat politicians in the end.
6. Some dishonest people ruin the good name of par-
ties and politics.
7. Withdraw all support from politicians at the first
hint of scandal.
8. People revise their opinions of politicians based
on performance.

Conclusion: You watch your boss' eyes glaze when you

reveal the persistent family problems that cut your job
productivity, and you conclude that you'd better not dis-
cuss these issues with her again.
 FARAWAY VIEWS 199

Generalizations (Which Are Valid?):

1. Bosses never like to hear about employees' per-
sonal problems.
2. Some employers see explanations of behavior as
excuses.
3. Never talk to an employer about personal issues
that may be affecting your job performance.
4. If you must discuss personal problems with your
employer, don't do it too often and choose your
opportunities carefully.
5. No one can tolerate a person's complaints about
problems.
6. Sometimes it's hard to show appropriate sympa-
thy for someone's personal problems.

Conclusion: You gain three pounds every time you pig

out on jelly doughnuts and chocolate milk, and you con-
clude that you'd better say no tonight or you won't fit
into the black lace cocktail dress you're wearing to your
brother's Saturday night wedding.

Generalizations (Which Are Valid?):

1. Doughnuts and chocolate milk make everyone fat.
2. People who gain weight may have trouble fitting
into their clothing.
3. Being thin is a highly desirable goal, especially if
you are planning to attend a formal party.
4. Showing restraint in eating may help you avoid
problems in wearing clothes later on.
5. Avoid carbohydrate-high sugar treats at all costs.
200 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

6. It's hard staying thin when so many delicious

foods regularly tempt us.
Each numbered instance under the three conclu-
sions above is a generalization. But not all the general-
izations are valid, given the stated conclusion. Some
generalizations go too far beyond the information given.
Others build on partial truth but allow no exceptions
and hence become absolutes. The valid generalizations
above are all the even-numbered statements. Odd-num-
bered statements are not viable: they go too far.
When we read, generalizing allows us to transcend
the immediate print details to larger issues in new set-
tings. We have to construct generalizations carefully,
based on material in the reading. We have to watch out
for the pitfalls when we try to generalize about features
of our nonprint worlds.
As I've already said, of all the high-order reading
skills, teachers acknowledge generalizing as one of the
most important and one of the most difficult. Not only
does a child have to know and identify the main idea,
understand vocabulary and key details, make inferences,
and draw conclusions, but she also must use all the
information she gathers in those processes to formulate
principles—valid principles—based on what she has
read. It's a tall order, so don't underestimate the effort.
I don't want to pass over the reference to main ideas
here, even though we spent quite a bit of time examin-
ing the concept in Chapter 5. When a main idea is not
clearly stated in a selection—that is, it is only implied—
the reader has to formulate the main idea herself. This
process often relies on generalizing. When you reflect on
all the key points in a selection and try to generate one
main idea that covers them all, you are generalizing.
You can't be too broad, you can't be too specific, and
you must use available information to state the general-
 FARAWAY VIEWS 201

ization appropriately. You want to help your child prac-

tice at home so that he doesn't stumble in formal class-
room situations.

Home Practice in Generalizing

One of the best ways I know for giving your child prac-
tice in the critical reading and thought skill of generaliz-
ing is through the mental process of classification.
When you classify, you group things together according
to some organizing principle. When you generalize, you
create a principle based on things you've observed. You
use related data to develop a concept.
Do you see the connection? Classifying is the same
process as generalizing, but on a different level. James
Moffett, a leading researcher in language arts and read-
ing skills, sees inseparable connections among classify-
ing, generalizing, and thinking itself. He says "thought
consists only of relating. Concepts result from sorting
things into classes and sorting is relating different things
according to a common trait."
Let me explain classification by relating it to a lesson
I observed a number of years back. An imaginative writ-
ing instructor was teaching the concept to beginning
college writers in an effort to get them to use classifica-
tion as an essay-organizing scheme. As soon as class
started, she opened her large leather pocketbook and
dumped its contents on the desk. "I'm sick of being such
a slob!" she said. "All this junk is mixed together in this
bag and I want to organize the stuff in some reasonable
order. Help me!"
Students examined the mess on the desk and, engag-
ing in lively conversation, talked about how to group the
diverse contents—lipstick, lifesavers, paper clips, pen-
cils, earrings, coins, gum, everything you could imagine
and then some. Several schemes were suggested. One
202 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

student proposed organizing the contents by function:

cosmetics, writing-related materials, edibles, jewelry,
and so on. Another student suggested organizing the
contents by size: big things here, smaller things there,
tiny things somewhere else. Yet another suggested an
arrangement by color: reds, blues, browns, and so forth.
One clever young man suggested making groups accord-
ing to value: expensive, moderately priced, cheap, utter
junk.
As a volunteer lifted the objects and asked where to
put them, the class directed one student to make the
groupings on the teacher's desk. Some groupings were
not inclusive enough and hence served no useful pur-
pose. Some categories overlapped too much, causing
confusion about where to place an object. In addition,
when many objects still remained in an unclassified pile,
students again knew they had to return to the drawing
boards.
After students had discussed the relative merits of
each plan, and after they had arrived at a satisfactory
definition of classification, the teacher reinforced the
concept by turning over a box of fancy chocolates on the
desktop. "How would you classify these?" she asked.
Again, a lively discussion followed. The students com-
pared their proposed groupings with those that the
manufacturer had listed on the box cover. Satisfied with
the first part of the day's work, students ate the bon
bons as they read paragraphs and essays based on clas-
sification principles.
This demonstration lesson helps me make some
important points. The first is that classification involves
generalizing at its most basic level. How did the young
men and women determine which groups to propose?
The students observed particular phenomena and then
generalized from them. The categories they created were
the "rules," the generalizations, drawn from observa-
 FARAWAY VIEWS 203

tions. Just as you developed a concept about your expe-

riences with local teenagers—they don't have any
respect, remember?—-students in this writing class
developed concepts about what they saw on the desk.
Each created category is a generalization. Being able to
classify means being able to see lots of particulars and
being able to relate a certain number of them to each
other, that relation determined by some broad principle.
When you look at chocolates and says, "These are
creams, these are fruits, these are nuts" you've made
three categories and produced three generalizations.
The second point I want to make here is that the
teacher drew on everyday, non-book experiences to help
students see that they already knew how to generalize.
It's a point you've heard me make many times before:
Build from existing strengths, from your child's store-
house of tacit knowledge (our friend Michael Polanyi
again!), and you build self-confidence to ease the skills
transfer when you focus on printed words.
I'm not pretending that all the generalizing skills
we're talking about are exactly alike. Certainly, it's easier
to generalize about concrete, observable objects that
stand motionless on a desk and that we can move about
physically—gum in this pile, a pocket comb in that
one—than it is to group abstract thoughts and ideas.
Nevertheless, the general statements that a teacher will
expect your child to make from his reading and thinking
relate in kind to those he can produce for conditions in
his environment.
And you must keep in mind that your child already
knows how to classify, although she may not be able to
state the organizing principle easily each time without
assistance. When she puts look-alike toys together in the
closet, when she organizes M & M's in piles by color,
when she separates coins into different groups by size,
color, or value, she's establishing categories. This is a
204 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

very important point. Think of your youngster as a child

endowed with the ability to classify, not as a child who
needs remedial work!
Take another tip from the college teacher I told you
about. Make your practice sessions active. That is,
encourage your child actually to cluster the related
objects in separate piles. The physical action is signifi-
cant because it reinforces the abstract notion of the
"group." Not only did the writing teacher's students cre-
ate discrete concepts, but they also used the concepts to
push things together. The students observed; they classi-
fied objects (that is, they produced generalizations); and
then they moved the objects into the proposed cate-
gories. I've learned from many years' experience that
any time you can connect action and thought, as the
teacher did here, you can create fertile conditions for
learning.
Stimulate your child's practice with generalizing,
then, by asking him to look at desultory information, to
create some order for it, to state the reasons for the cate-
gories he produced (here's where your thoughtful, prob-
ing questions will produce good results), and then to do
something active that demonstrates the integrity of the
groupings.
Where to begin? The possibilities are limited only by
your imagination. I've listed a number of suggestions for
easy conversation with your child:

Making Categories at Home

Help your child classify:
1. toys in the closet or toy chest
2. clothing in the dresser drawers
3. food in the cupboard or refrigerator
4. special toys—dolls, trucks, hats
 FARAWAY VIEWS 205

5. books on the bedroom shelf

6. food items on the shopping list
7. items in the medicine chest
8. tools and other objects in the basement or garage
9. baseball or movie star cards
10. photos in the photo album or photo box
11. photos in magazines and newspapers
12. advertisements in magazines and newspapers
13. favorite television programs or films
14. favorite foods
15. favorite games

For any of the suggestions above, use your child's

age and current abilities to gauge how much to expect.
Ideally, you hope that your youngster can look at a set of
apparently disparate materials, can propose different
categories, and can fit items appropriately into those
categories. In addition, you'd like your youngster to look
again at that same collection of items and propose a dif-
ferent set of groups based on alternate organizing con-
cepts. Yet, you have to help build up your child's skills to
reach this point.
With young children and other beginners at classifi-
cation, you may have to establish categories in advance,
either on your own or with your child. For example, if
you're grouping home photos or pictures and illustra-
tions in a magazine, propose some categories prior to the
activity. "Let's try to group the photos in this magazine.
Let's put all the pictures of babies together, all the pic-
tures of teenagers, grown-ups, senior citizens, and so
on." Or, you might say, "Let's go through this book and
206 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

find all the pictures of red things." Or, "Let's look for
dogs, cats, and birds in this book." If your youngster
understands and applies the directions, your next step is
to encourage her to suggest the groups. "How else might
we arrange these pictures? Yes, that's a good idea—by
alphabet, all the as in one group, the b's in another, and
so on. That would take a long time, wouldn't it, if we had
to classify all the pictures? Let's just do some of them.
"Any other kinds of groups you can think of? Sure,
we can group the pictures according to the places
around the house that the people are in. Bedroom peo-
ple here, kitchen people here, and so on."
What's essential, no matter who proposes the cate-
gories, is that the items included fit the groups and that
your child understands and can state the general princi-
ple that rules the individual categories and that connects
them. When he says, "These are in the same group
because they are all yellow" and "We're grouping these
pictures by color"; or "These belong together because all
the people are happy" and "We're grouping these pic-
tures according to the emotions the people express"
your youngster is learning how to generalize.
Don't forget the importance of active learning. Once
you agree on the categories, wherever possible, start
putting the objects in groups. (Many items on the above
list lend themselves easily to direct actions. Other items
are more abstract and require think-aloud categories or,
if you wish, paper and pencil.) When your child devel-
ops a plan for organizing toys in the closet, help him
shift the toys to places he recommends—stuffed animals
beside the shoes, toy trucks on the back shelf, matchbox
cars opposite the shoes, baseball cards in a cigar box.
When your child helps you classify items on your super-
market shopping list, let him take his own cart and
select the appropriate foods in two categories, say, as
you do the rest.
 FARAWAY VIEWS 207

It's easy and fun to do these classification projects

with your child in informal sessions at home. No pres-
sure now: You're building generalizing skills by tapping
competences that your child already has, so rejoice in
her energies and talents.
If your youngster likes to write, you can continue to
sharpen category-making skills by encouraging your
child to use a Sense Chart, a strategy I recommend in
Any Child Can Write. With a sense chart, your child clas-
sifies sensory impressions that she receives at a given,
defined moment. She records sights (including colors
and actions), sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations of
touch. This paper and pencil exercise is more abstract
than the others we examined: Your child has to identify
the sensory impressions and record them in appropriate
columns. Also, some of the images recorded rely on
more than one sense impression. Still, the categories are
named in advance, making the effort not beyond your
eight- or nine-year-old's abilities.
208 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Making Generalizations from Reading

I pointed out before that teachers consider generalizing
a critical thinking and reading skill. When children read,
they must be able to extend meanings beyond the ideas
developed in the passage at hand. Here's a brief passage
typical of selections your youngster might find in a
social studies book. I've provided some multiple choice
questions clearly focused on generalizing; once again,
these help you see how study questions or commercial
tests probe your child's critical thinking.

One rainy morning in 1955, Harry Van Sin-

deren left his home in Washington, Connecticut,
to drive to his office in New York, about a hun-
dred miles away. The rain turned into a down-
pour—the heaviest he could remember. Switch-
ing on the car radio, he learned that he was in
the midst of a tropical storm that had swung
inland from the coast, and that streams were
flooding all through northern Connecticut. A few
minutes later he got worse news: A dam on the
Shepaug River above Washington had broken,
and the resulting flood had wiped out the center
of the town, with considerable loss of life and
property.
Harry drove on to New York, walked into his
office, and wrote out his resignation as chairman
of the board of the export-import company he
had managed for many years. He then drove
back to Washington, through the still-pouring
rain, and appointed himself Chief Rebuilder of
the town. He was sixty-six years old at the time.
Harry Van Sinderen would probably be part of
which larger group of people:
 FARAWAY VIEWS 209

1. men and women interested in town and city plan-

ning
2. those meteorologists (weather experts) who are
interested in tropical storms
3. those who are slightly insane
4. those dissatisfied with their jobs because they are
not making enough money

Mr. Van Sinderen's actions suggest

1. that people should not go outdoors in tropical
rainstorms
2. that a manager's job is often dull
3. that driving a car to and from work each day is a
great drain of energy
4. that people late in life can change careers for
meaningful work

Harry Van Sinderen would agree

1. that personal success in business and finance is a
person's key aim
2. that service to the community in a time of crisis is
more important than personal goals
3. that people should carry heavy insurance in case
of disasters like flooding
4. that unexpected storms in Connecticut are violent

The first question asks your youngster to make a

simple generalization that's very closely connected to the
classification skills I've encouraged you to practice.
Here, your child has to say to herself, "What do I know
210 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

about this guy Harry Van Sinderen that allows me to put

him into a group?" The group is the generalization. Your
child must determine the qualities that Harry van Sin-
deren has, qualities that make him similar to other peo-
ple for whom a category exists. See how we're going
beyond the information given in the passage? Let's ana-
lyze the responses here and come up with the appropri-
ate answer.
Based upon Van Sinderen's concern for damage to
the city from the rainstorm, and based upon the state-
ment that he made himself Chief Rebuilder of the town,
the idea that he has interest in town planning is clear.
Even though he may have acted strangely in giving up
his company job, and even though people often leave
jobs for higher-paying employment, we have no evi-
dence that Van Sinderen is either slightly insane or
underpaid for the work he does now. And just because
he found himself in the midst of a heavy downpour we
cannot conclude that, like some meteorologists, he has a
special interest in tropical storms. Only answer 1 is a
fair conclusion for the first question.
The second question requires your child to go even
further beyond the paragraph specifics. Mr. Van Sin-
deren, a man of sixty-six years, suddenly resigned one job
to take on another he thought more important. We can
generalize and say that his actions suggest that age does
not have to stop a person from making major changes in
his or her life's work. Using Van Sinderen's decision,
we've developed a general rule, more or less: People late
in life can change their careers for meaningful work. This
is not a general statement that everyone would agree
with, but information in the paragraph supports the gen-
eralization. For the second question only 4 is correct.
All the other statements in question 2 are generaliza-
tions too, but nothing in the selection supports them. It's
a general rule that people should not go out in tropical
 FARAWAY VIEWS 211

storms. But Van Sinderen really benefited from his ride

in the heavy rains—they helped him make an important
decision. And although it's often generally true that dri-
ving each day drains energy, nothing in the paragraph
substantiates that idea. Further, even though Van Sin-
deren quit his job, and even though we suspect, in gen-
eral, that a manager's job often has dull moments, we
cannot validate the idea from paragraph information.
For question 2, then, we would have to reject choices 1,
2, and 3.
Question 3 also requires you to make some rules
based on the paragraph. Though we know generally that
for many people financial and business success is a key
aim, we do not know that Van Sinderen would agree. (In
fact by quitting a high-level job his actions imply that
those forms of success may not be essential to him.)
Choice 1 then is not correct. Choice 3 is also a general-
ization, and a very reasonable one at that. Many people
would agree that heavy insurance can help in times of
disaster. But there's nothing in the passage you have
read to show that Van Sinderen agrees with that idea.
We have to rule out choice 3, therefore. Choice 4 is not
correct either. It is much too broad. It suggests that any
unexpected storm in Connecticut is violent. How can we
make that generalization from this paragraph, which
talks about only one storm?
For the third question, then, only 3 is correct. Van
Sinderen did make a personal sacrifice by giving up his
secure job as chairman of the board; he made that sacri-
fice in order to help in rebuilding his town after a very
serious storm. His actions suggest that he would agree
that people in times of crisis should give up their own
personal goals to serve their communities. That is a fair
generalization from this piece.
Want to try another selection and some questions
about generalizing? Here goes.
212 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Soon after the Drake family moved to Tahiti,

they found a lovely site for their new home. It was
on a hill where many tropical plants were grow-
ing. A small stream rushed down the hillside.
The Drakes wanted their new home to be the
kind of house that the Tahitians built before
Europeans came to the island. It was to have
wide porches and a thatched roof. Of course,
they planned to include a few modern conve-
niences—like running water and electricity.
The newcomers were sure they would have no
trouble finding someone who could build such a
house. They also thought that it would not cost
very much. In fact they had a difficult time find-
ing a Tahitian who was interested in their project.
The builders they spoke to could not understand
why the Drakes did not want a modern house.
The Drakes finally convinced a builder that
they really wanted an old-fashioned Tahitian
house. They explained that such a house was
cooler and more practical than a European-style
house would be.
After all, the Tahitians of long ago found out
through experience what kind of house best
suited their environment. European homes were
meant for a different land and climate.
In a short time, the floors were laid on
cement blocks, and the walls were put up. The
roof caused some real problems for the Drakes.
They had trouble finding someone who knew
how to make the thatching.
There were only a few Tahitians who still knew
the art of thatching. They were mainly elderly peo-
ple who lived in the country. Most homes on the
island had composition or metal roofs.
Finally, the builder located some men on Lit-
tle Tahiti, where many pandanus trees still grow.
 FARAWAY VIEWS 213

They still knew how to make the pandanus into

thatch.
The Drakes had to do a great deal of talking
before the men agreed to do the work. The new
house was quite large and would need a lot of
thatch. The men took the job only after one of
them was promised a sewing machine.
The Drakes were now ready to order bath-
room and kitchen fixtures and appliances. These
had to be shipped from New Zealand. Electricity
was brought to their new house on lines from
Papeete. Water was piped into the house from
the stream that flowed through their property.
At last the house was finished. The Drakes
were delighted with it. All the windows opened
outward—like awnings. When the windows were
all opened, the couple felt as if they were living in
a tent.
The kitchen was in a separate building that
was connected to the main house by a breezeway.
That meant that the heat and smells of cooking
were far from the parts of the house where the
Drakes spent most of their time.

Native Tahitians are most likely to

1. keep to traditional ways.
2. prefer a modern way of life.
3. not do business with Americans.

Traditional craft skills (such as roof thatching)

1. are getting lost in the modern world.
2. require more training than skills for modern jobs.
3. can be profitable in todays world.
214 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Traditional cultures
1. survive over modem cultures.
2. are out of date for today's world.
3. may have good ideas that we can apply to the
modern world.
The generalization that you can make safely among
the first set of possibilities is that Tahitians prefer a
modern way of life (answer 2). You can see this from
their surprise that anyone would want to build an old-
fashioned house and from the fact that almost no Tahi-
tians cared to learn how to make traditional roofs, even
though the leaves were free. The other two answers
counter the story details.
The second generalization that you can make is that
traditional skills are being lost (answer 1). You can see
this from the difficulty that the Drakes had in finding
workers. The story, however, gives you no evidence to
judge whether the traditional skills are harder or easier
to learn than modern ones. You know only that people
are not learning the old ones. And even though the
Drakes are willing to barter a sewing machine for a tra-
ditional craftsman's work, few other people seem inter-
ested in hiring such workers.
Finally, the last generalization you can make is that
traditional cultures may have good ideas that we can
apply to modern life (answer 3). The house is an exam-
ple of just that. Some traditional ideas were combined
with modern conveniences to make a house that fits the
environment. This example in fact shows that tradi-
tional cultures are not totally out of date, therefore rul-
ing out answer' 2. Yet we cannot say that such cultures
survive over modern ones; the way that the house was
constructed really challenges the Tahitian pattern as
shown in the selection. Answer 1 is wrong here too.
I think that you'll find these pointers useful.
 Tips for Making Valid Generalizations
As yo u loo k a t passage s wit h your child, guid e hi m o r he r t o
make vali d generalizations . Remember , whe n yo u generaliz e
you generate a rule, concept, or principle that goes beyond the
specific informatio n i n the reading . To make accurate general-
izations:
1. B e sure that yo u understand th e main idea an d ke y
details i n th e reading. (Sometimes , yo u hav e to general -
ize as one of your first efforts at understanding wha t you
read. I n order to stat e the mai n ide a when i t i s implied ,
you often have to generalize from the available details i n
the selection! See Chapter 5.)
2. Pa y particular attention to predicting outcomes and draw-
ing appropriate conclusions from your reading. Often,
generalizing i s the nex t ste p afte r drawing conclusions ,
the second skill building o n the first and going beyond it.
Once you've state d a conclusion, thin k abou t whethe r it
could appl y t o othe r relate d situation s o r conditions . I f
you produc e a generalizatio n fro m a valid conclusion ,
weigh carefull y whethe r i t reall y doe s appl y t o th e ne w
context.
3. D o not go to o fa r beyond the information given. Zealous
generalizers often make statements that ar e too sweep-
ing (you'v e hear d the phras e "sweepin g generalization, "
right?) an d muc h to o broa d i n their scope , despit e th e
fact that th e generalizatio n migh t hav e a degree of truth
to i t o r migh t b e anchore d i n a valid conclusio n fro m
another, more limited context.
4. D o not prohibit exceptions. Often, a generalization works
against itsel f b y includin g excluders , words that preven t
exceptions an d tha t preven t reasonabl e peopl e from
accepting th e premis e o n whic h you r generalizatio n i s
built. The culprits : word s lik e absolutely, never, always,
must, an d certainly. You can avoi d generalization s tha t
are too rigi d by using words like sometimes, often, occa-
sionally, probably, usually, might, and often.
216 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

The High-Order Skills Together: A Review

Let's look now at a textbook selection that your son or
daughter is apt to tote home on the school bus. You'll
also be interested in seeing some typical questions pro-
vided in a home reading assignment, a class practice
exercise, or a commercial assessment measure. These
questions deal with the high order skills we've been talk-
ing about in this chapter and the ones directly before
it—inferring, predicting outcomes, drawing conclusions,
and generalizing. I've taken the selection from an upper-
grade elementary school social studies book. Here you
see a glimpse of the Bedouins, nomads who live in the
deserts of North Africa, and the values that these people
instill in their children.

The Bedouin people think most highly of peo-

ple who show loyalty. To them loyalty does not
mean that one is devoted to a country, a place, or
a leader. Loyalty means being faithful to one's
family and tribe.
The Bedouin take pride in their ancestors.
They do not admire a hero from an ordinary or
poor family as much as one who comes from an
honored family. They particularly respect those
who have inherited a good name and then have
passed it on to their children.
A man's position among the black-tent people
depends upon his ancestors, relatives, and fellow
tribesmen. If they are honored, he is also hon-
ored. If they are disgraced, he too is disgraced.
Therefore one carefully guards the honor of his
family, his lineage, and his tribe.
A man can protect his family's honor by being
brave and generous and by giving protection to
those who ask for it. He also guards it by care-
fully watching the women of his family.
 FARAWAY VIEWS 217

A Bedouin woman cannot bring honor to her

family, but she can bring disgrace. Even if a
woman only looks as if she has done wrong, she
may be killed. The honor of her family depends
upon her virtue.
1. Based on this passage, you can predict that a
Bedouin man will feel disgraced if he
a. does not succeed at business.
b. needs to ask for help from his brothers.
c. does nothing when a member of his family is
insulted.
d. does not help a stranger who asks for assis-
tance.
2. From this passage you can predict that if a Bedouin
woman betrays her husband with another man, the
a. woman will be punished.
b. other man will be punished.
c. husband will ask for a divorce.
d. woman will be forgiven.
3. From this passage you can conclude that the
Bedouin people
a. respect people who leave their families to seek
success on their own.
b. respect people who value their families above
all else.
c. blame government officials who use their
power to get special favors for their families.
d. are self-centered.
4. You can conclude that Bedouin women are
a. treated as the equals of men.
b. always listened to carefully when they tell their
side of a story.
c. respected for the many things they do.
d. not respected as much as men.
218 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

5. You can generalize about this passage that the

Bedouin people
a. are a peaceful people.
b. center their lives around their families.
c. are not concerned with status and honor.
d. are quick to recognize individual excellence.

How did you both do? Check your responses and

talk about them with your child: 1. c., 2. a., 3. b., 4. d., 5.
b.
 11
Moms and Dads
as Reading Helpers
GOOD BOOKS THROUGH THE GRADES

Read some chilling statistics, reported in an accurate

Roper Organization survey a short time ago. Pollsters
telephoned a nationally representative cross section of
1,000 families with kids from three to fourteen years
old.
Over ninety percent of moms and dads said reading
was essential to their boy or girl's success. But of those
with a child who could read, only 66 percent were happy
with how their youngster was reading.
According to age group, these are the numbers
regarding parents who thought their child was inter-
ested in reading:
SCHOOL LEVEL PERCENTAGE
Preschool 56%
Kindergarten-second grade 59%
Third grade-fifth grade 53%
Beyond fifth grade 39%

219
220 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

At best, therefore, according to parents, six out of

ten youngsters in any of the four groups found books
stimulating.
Of all the families surveyed only forty-four percent
said their children read for pleasure each day.
The implications are astounding. Personal happi-
ness, future education, good jobs, enlightened citizenry,
the society's continued advance: these all are at stake.
Looking beyond the elementary and junior high school
years, a Carnegie Foundation survey of 5500 college pro-
fessors revealed that 75% think undergraduates at their
institutions are seriously underprepared in basic skills;
66% think their colleges are paying too much money
and spending too much time teaching what students
should have learned prior to college admission.
The failure of our schools to develop essential skills,
the pervasive indifference to books among our children,
the minimal achievement level at which so many young-
sters hover throughout their educational lives—these are
grim barriers to knowledge, happiness, and success. We
read about this new study, that commission's report,
those irrefutable data. We worry for awhile and then
shrug with resignation. I'm not hopeful that the depress-
ing statistics we hear about so regularly will improve
any time soon, no matter what changes we make in our
country's formal educational system. But in the informal
realm;—the home, the supermarket, the playground, the
various child-parent intersections—fertile, untilled soil
stretches out around us.
At the core of how society measures educational
growth and achievement, of course, at the heart of
learning and knowledge, are books and the skills needed
to use them profitably. True, the media explosion in the
last fifty years has supplemented books as the sole
repositories of knowledge, adding simple visual, action
video, and auditory means of conveying information.
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 221

The computer with its almost illimitable retrieval system

and its potential for integrating many media as instruc-
tional tools has challenged our methods of acquiring
knowledge. This challenge burst upon us in a manner
unparalleled since Guttenberg's printing pr s, in
another age, revolutionized learning.
It's important to realize, however, that the computer
in many ways has increased what we have to read and
not decreased it. Churning out information, computers
deluge us with more data requiring interpretation than
anyone ever dreamed of. Many people moan and groan
about how technology is doing away with the need to
read, but I see it instead as increasing that need beyond
measure.
In the 1990s there is more to know than at any other
moment in past history. In fact, for example, scholars
estimate that 90% of all scientists who ever lived are liv-
ing today. Think about that fact for a moment. Think
about all the scientific discoveries reported in the last
fifty years. Think about the incredible strain that new
information so rapidly garnered places on a lethargic
educational system. Think about the endless spectrum
of options curriculum planners, school administrators,
and teachers have as they try to lay out a learning pro-
gram for your child. Think about how crowded an ele-
mentary school teacher's day is, especially with our cur-
rent hysteria about content—facts, data, information
bits. What does a teacher include? exclude? After teach-
ing the minimum essentials, teachers may sacrifice the
painstaking practice needed to perfect reading skills.
Whether or not you agree with this approach is not
the point. The point is that we have a swiftly flowing
river of information, which is becoming a stronger tor-
rent each day. Even in the best of all worlds, formal edu-
cational structures alone—schools, classrooms,
libraries—are not enough support to create a nation of
222 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

successful learners. There's too much to do, too little

time, and too many distractions.
Your child needs you to help him learn.
For many years the education establishment insisted
on sole guardianship of curricula. Parents were unwel-
come invaders in the land of intellectual and academic
growth. Teach your child moral and religious values;
make him or her a "good" boy or girl; and leave the rest
to the teachers and administrators. That's the message
my parents took away from their encounters with edu-
cators in the fifties and sixties.
Such a position was untenable then, and it's even
more untenable now. Given the complex world we
inhabit and the growing need to learn more and more
about it, parents are essential contributors to their chil-
dren's education. If you don't play a role in your child's
push toward knowledge, your youngster will face many
disadvantages throughout his educational career.
I'm not recommending that you become your child's
teacher. I've taken great pains to point out regularly in
this book my opposition to defining your household role
as formal learning master—unless, of course, you're a
"home schooling" parent and can manage the serious
emotional and intellectual demands on your family and
time that a rigorous teaching program at home will
bring. Moms and dads have a much more important job
to do: establish positive learning conditions at home; be
loving, knowledgeable learning facilitators; and help
your child be a better reader.
In this book I have aimed to invite you, the parent,
into the scheme of teaching and learning and to give you
the information you need to help advance your child's
reading through the grades. You have a rare opportunity
to stimulate critical thinking, to integrate your child's
surrounding world into print-based learning, and to
guide and shape the educational excellence of someone
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 223

you love deeply. I want you to avoid the frustrations of

the Baltimore parents I mentioned in the first chapter
who didn't know where to begin in helping their chil-
dren improve as readers at school. With what you've
read in Any Child Can Read Better you can deal thought-
fully with the various history, geography, English, sci-
ence, health, and computer activities and assignments
that your son or daughter will bring home for your
advice and support. You'll help your child answer his or
her own questions and, by asking several of your own,
you'll be stimulating active and critical thought within a
variety of school subjects.
I believe without reservation that any child can read
better—better than he or she is reading now, better than
he or she has learned in school, better than teachers
expect your child to read on his or her own. Let me end
my comments by telling you what awaits you on the
remaining pages of Any Child Can Read Better. With your
interests in your child's reading development, you
should carve out some time to guide your youngster's
choice of books for independent reading. From the earli-
est years onward what your child reads on his own
affects quite dramatically the observable measures of
school success, such as course grades, achievement
tests, SATs and ACTs. Parallel to the required reading
your child does in textbooks at school should be a home
program in reading for enjoyment and knowledge.
Here again, don't count on the schools to guide
appropriate choices based on your child's individual
interests and talents. Other than a broad assignment
category—"Read a biography"; "Read a book of nonfic-
tion"; "Read a work of fiction about animals"—your
child will not get much guidance in tailoring the activity
to her interests. Yet choosing those independent read-
ings are very important because they help establish your
youngster's long-range commitment to reading. A couple
224 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

of wrong turns here and you risk losing a lifetime

reader. You don't want your child counted among the
almost 50% of kids from third to fifth grade who aren't
interested in reading. You don't want your child counted
among the 61% of kids beyond fifth grade who aren't
interested in reading.
To counter that bleak prospect in part, I've devised
this list of recommended books with titles that will
interest your child from first grade through sixth grade.
It's an extensive list, I admit; it includes books I like and
books I've found that kids like. It covers a range of
selections and interests—fact and fancy, fiction and
nonfiction, science, biography, poetry, fairy tales—in
short a range of options for growing children's diverse
interests.
But this is not just a book list. I've also provided a
rather full summary of each selection so that you can
talk intelligently about the book with your son or daugh-
ter and can provide some enticing details. Ideally, of
course, you should read the book too, preferably with
and, when you can, aloud to your child. (No matter how
old your child is she'll love for you to read to her.) How-
ever, in case time slips away from you and you can't read
the book you've recommended, I've given you enough of
a summary to carry on a useful conversation. But
remember: If you can, read the book.
Most important in this list, however, is the instruc-
tion you'll find book by book in tackling the critical
thought skills so necessary for reading success. I've tried
to give you conversational prompts, questions designed
to engage your child with vocabulary, fact-finding, infer-
ence, drawing conclusions, making generalizations—
with all those cognitive processes that sharpen reading
abilities and heighten pleasure and understanding.
Here they are in alphabetical order, with grade levels
indicated for each book. Read. Talk. Enjoy.
 MOMS AND D S AS READING HELPERS 225

175 Science Experiments to Amuse and Amaze Your Friends.

Brenda Walpole. New York: Random House, 1988. (Gr. 3-7).
This attractive collection of science experiments gives your child
practice with a style of writing common in textbooks but less
frequently found in recreational reading. Short explanations
coupled with colorful illustrations lead kids to solve problems
independently. Yet your youngster will use the same skills of
inference, of drawing conclusions, and of forming generaliza-
tions.
The experiments are organized in four major sections dealing
with water, air, movement, and light. Each section begins with
an intriguing question such as "Why does a hot air balloon rise?"
or "If you spin this multi-colored disk, what color would you
see?" To explain how you and your child can use this book, we'll
use the activities on "Light and Shadows" in the section on light.
Notice the box titled "Light and Shadows" on page 132. The
highlighted paragraph explains the scientific principle behind
the activities, the principle that light travels in straight lines.
Give your youngster a chance to become comfortable with this
concept. Talk about the picture of the sunlight shining through
the trees. Has your child ever seen light shining through trees
like that? Talk about how those beautiful sunbeams are sepa-
rated rays of light that cannot curve around trees. Has she ever
seen sunbeams shining through clouds? What might separate
light rays in clouds?
The activities are sequenced from simple homespun shadow
tricks through sun clocks and measurement of sun shadows to
studying eclipses or shadows in space, but your child can pick
any activity that is suitable and interesting. Read the questions
next to the illustrations to focus your child's thoughts on the
topic. For example, ask what will happen when a shape is held
different distances from a light. What happens to the size of the
shadow? Your child can predict the outcome, then try it out and
finally read the short explanation on the next page to compare
her explanation with the authors. Talk about what happened to
the shadow. What generalization or rule did you learn from the
shadow's changes? If your child makes a shadow clock, ask her
to predict when the shadow will be closest to the pencil. Why
should it be closer at that time? Relate this concept to her own
experience by talking about other shadows your child sees
changing during the day: shadows of trees, buildings, people.
When does a houses shadow stay close to the walls? When does
its shadow reach far away?
226 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Enjoy this chance to make reading part of your child's active

exploration of her world.
A Dolphin Goes t o School. Elizabeth Simpson Smith. New York:
Morrow, 1986. (Gr. 2-5). Squirt the dolphin got his name from
his love of teasing: He squirted his trainer out in the Atlantic
Ocean at their first meeting! Playful, teasing dolphins become
good performers, trying hard to please human audiences. But
playfulness meshes with hard work at the dolphin school Squirt
attended. This book follows Squirt's school days from his cap-
ture in the ocean to his graduation to become a performer.
Your child may think it strange that the word "behavior" is
used frequently in the book. Talk about its special meaning here.
Compare that meaning to the meaning we usually have for
"behavior." Consider why the author talks about behaviors
instead of "tricks." Do you have a different feeling for an animal
that does "behaviors" rather than "tricks"? How do the connota-
tions of the words compare and contrast?
Squirt's sensitivity and ability to communicate, both with
people and with other dolphins, are the most compelling aspects
of this book. To share this appreciation with your child and to
encourage a broader view of the issues involved in dolphin train-
ing, ask about the feelings the dolphins and trainer have for each
other. What can we infer about the attraction between dolphins
and people? Remember how Squirt came up to his trainer vol-
untarily out in the ocean and began to play with him. What do
you enjoy about watching dolphins? What details or episodes
about communication between dolphins show that they regu-
larly "talk" with each other and give each other emotional sup-
port. From A Dolphin Goes to School, what generalizations can
you draw about the relations between humans and wild ani-
mals?
With your child consider how Squirt's capture revealed the
bond between people and dolphins. Compare the capture and
training of wild dolphins to the capture and training of wild
horses or other wild animals. Would the dolphins ever be trained
using straps and harnesses? Would the trainers ever speak of
"breaking" a wild dolphin as trainers talk about other animals?
Consider the concern for the dolphins health and comfort. How
is the dolphin treated? What generalizations can you make
about the training of a dolphin?
During the training, notice the attention the trainer gives to
the happiness of the dolphin. Think about the training the day
that quirt's friend had her baby. Also consider the effect of the
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 227

glass tank on Squirt's performance. What conclusions can you

draw about the influence of a dolphins feelings on his ability to
learn and perform?
Have your child watch for details that indicate how much the
trainers know about dolphins. The description of Squirt's cap-
ture and his trip to the school offer an opportunity to infer much
regarding the trainer's knowledge and duties. Use that informa-
tion to draw conclusions about the kind of training and charac-
ter a trainer should have. Ask your child to evaluate the rewards
of the job, at least the satisfaction of working with the animals.
Would your child want to work as an animal trainer?
The Amazing Bone. William Steig. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1975. (Gr. 1-3). The Amazing Bone is an excellent story
for building reading skills. A read aloud can offer more intellec-
tual stimulation than the typical learn-to-read book. Its ric
vocabulary evokes the lushness of spring or the cold, threatening
sound of a knife being sharpened. Words like "ravenous croco-
dile" or "odiferous wretch" will expand word storehouses. Use
context clues to determine meanings wherever you can. I recom-
mend focusing a conversation on new words to make them a
part of your child's active vocabulary with questions like "Do you
think the fox is as ravenous as the crocodile?" or "Do you think
that odiferous wretch really is a smelly rascal?" Include practice
with predicting outcomes: "What will the fox say when the bone
calls him an odiferous wretch?"
This tale of Pearl and her amazing bone draws on a young
child's already established literary background. Even a very young
reader will recognize elements borrowed from "Little Red Riding
Hood." Zero in on comparison-contrast skills with questions such
as "What were Pearl and Little Red Riding Hood doing?" "Where
were they?" "What do the wolf and the fox want?" "What charac-
ters do you find in one story but not in the other?" "Which villain,
the fox or the wolf, is more wicked?" "Which one feels a little
sorry for his victim?" "Which one wants his meal to be tasty and
delicious?" "Which ending do you like better?"
Enjoy more of guessing what will happen next, that is, pre-
dicting outcomes. Patterns within the story may be repeated—
but are not necessarily repeated. Before you turn the page ask
whether the fox will run away. Will the fox be like the robbers?
What can you conclude about the fox when he doesn't fall for
the bone's trick? Do you think Pearl will escape from the fox?
Why? Why do you guess that the fox will be dangerous as soon
as he meets Pearl?
228 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Unusual things happen with the bone—things that could

never happen in real life. But can anything and everything hap-
pen? What general rules govern the bone? What statement in the
story tells you that the bone is limited in what it can do? Do you
like the world that Pearl and the bone live in? Why or why not?
Amos Fortune, Free Man. Elizabeth Yates. New York: Button, 1950.
(Gr. 4-8). Amos Fortune, born the son of an African chief, came
to Boston on a slave ship in 1725. At fifteen he entered Caleb
and Celia Copeland's Quaker household, legally a slave, but liv-
ing more as a member of the family. Amos freely gave Caleb his
loyalty, substituting Caleb for the father he had lost in Africa and
postponing offers of freedom until Caleb's untimely death sent
Amos to a new household. After years of service Amos earned
his own freedom and the freedom of several other slaves. His
character and craftsmanship earned him the respect of the white
as well as the black community.
Elizabeth Yates based her book on original documents, but
added details to create a lively and readable story. With your
child look at the list of original documents in the introductory
pages and discuss which details of the story are most likely addi-
tions supplied by the author. Can you be certain which elements
are from original documents? Do you think the story of the read-
ing lesson at the Copeland's is taken from Amos' papers or cre-
ated by Yates? Are all details of the story authentic? For exam-
ple, is there icy water, or are there seasons as we know them in
tropical Africa?
The reader learns a great deal about Amos in the first pages
of the story. What qualities remain a part of him through his
life? Discuss how Amos proves his commitment to peace during
his capture and in later years. Talk about his vision of himself as
a protector of his people and his belief that his noble birth made
him a servant of his people. How does the scripture reading in
the Copeland's Bible bring together his early vision of himself
and his role in his new life in America? Can you infer that Amos'
vision for himself gave his life direction and meaning? Talk
about the special place Amos kept for his sister. Compare his sis-
ter with the women he later freed. What were some characteris-
tics his sister shared with the first ones Amos freed?
Have your child compare Celia's and Caleb's attitude toward
Amos when he arrived at their house. Why do you think Amos
did not speak? Do you think it strange that he remained silent?
When Celia states, "I will teach him as I teach the other chil-
dren," what can you infer about her estimation of Amos' intelli-
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 229

gence? What can you infer about Amos' intelligence and capabil-
ities as he bargains in the market and carries on his trade as a
tanner?
A conversation about this book should evaluate Amos' views
of freedom. Why did Amos try hard to procure freedom for sev-
eral others in the last months of their lives? Why was it impor-
tant at that time? On page 162 Amos argues that "it does a man
no good to be free until he knows how to live." Discuss together
what Amos means by knowing how to live. Does Amos mean
that some people will not deserve freedom? How should people
become ready for freedom? Would some people today judge that
Amos was too submissive?
Help your child evaluate the respect Amos received from both
blacks and whites. How does the letter from the father of Amos'
apprentice indicate that Amos was considered a good role model
and teacher for a white youth? Do you think Amos would be a
good role model today?
Buffalo Hunt. Russell Freedman. New York: Holiday House, 1988.
(Gr. 3-7). Introduce this book by looking at the illustrations,
which are reproductions of paintings by nineteenth century
artists. Talk about the historic value of these paintings. How are
these paintings like photographs? How does the sequence of the
paintings show you the history of the buffalo's dramatic disap-
pearance. You will probably want to provide some historical
context for the importance of these artists. How many white
men then had witnessed a buffalo hunt or even visited the
plains? Imagine the awe and excitement of the painters when
they saw the buffalo. What courage would it take to get close
enough to paint a buffalo hunt? What other dangers did the
painters face during their wanderings among the various tribes?
Why does the author begin the book with Indian legends
about the origin of the buffalo that show that the buffalo was a
special animal? Help your child evaluate the buffalo in Indian
society. Consider how much food one buffalo provided and the
number of buffalo that hunters could kill in one hunt. Weigh the
dangers, strategies, successes, and failures of the hunt. Would
you agree with the Indians' conclusion that the buffalo hunt was
worth the danger?
Several events greatly affected the buffalo hunt. Help your
child select these important developments and evaluate their rel-
ative importance: the arrival of the horse, the coming of settlers
on the wagon trains, the sale of buffalo hides and tongues back
East, and finally the development of a new tanning process for
230 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

buffalo hides. (Did you expect the gun to be a more important

influence on buffalo hunting?) How did horses affect the hunt?
When would you have preferred to hunt without horses? Why
did settlers in wagon trains kill buffalo? Why did other white
hunters kill buffalo? Were they the only ones to hunt for profit?
Which development contributed most to the loss of the buffalo?
What was the influence of people back East who had never seen
a live buffalo? If each person in the East bought one buffalo
hide, how many buffalo would have been killed? Do you think
those purchasers of buffalo hides ever realized they were chang-
ing the West? How did those purchasers of hides change the
lives of the Indians?
What was the result of killing off the buffalo? What do you
know about the use of the buffalo for Indians? What happened
to the Indians after the buffalo disappeared? Who, in your judg-
ment, was responsible?
The Carp i n the Bathtub. Barbara Cohen. New York: Lothrop, Lee &
Shepard, 1972. (Gr. 1-5). Imagine eating a friend for dinner!
Twice a year Mama keeps a carp in the bathtub for a week so
that she will have a good fresh fish for her famous gefilte fish at
holiday time. But during the carp's stay in the tub, Leah and
Harry, the children in the family, feed it; the carp becomes their
friend. Especially the year that Leah is nine, they have a particu-
larly happy and intelligent fish whom they name Joe. How can
they let Mama kill him with the club and serve him for dinner
on Passover?
You and your child can enter a lively conversation about eat-
ing animals. Do you picture your hamburger as having once
been an animal? Do you worry about how it gets to your plate?
How do you feel about hunting or fishing? Does the hunter
know the animal being hunted? Talk about the difference
between eating an animal raised on a huge cattle ranch and eat-
ing an animal raised as a pet. What is special about the pet?
How do you think the rancher thinks about the animals?
In the story Papa explains that certain animals are meant to
be eaten while others are not. Consider Leah's response that she
does not want to eat a friend. Are Papa and Leah really talking
about the same thing? What is the difference between eating a
certain kind of animal and eating one particular animal? What
has happened when that animal became singled out from the
others and brought to live with people? What worries Papa most
during the carp crisis? How will Mama feel if her family doesn't
like the meal she prepares for them?
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 231

As Papa talks about the carp, your young reader can also
learn how he feels about his family. Have your child look at the
illustrations. How do the children and Papa reach for each
other? Are the children happy to see Papa in the crowd? How
does conversation among family members indicate that they
love each other? What details in the story indicate that the fam-
ily cares for each other? How do they know—that is, what
details allow the inference? Why does Papa bring home the cat?
Why couldn't Mama understand the children's choice of the
name Joe for the cat?
Let your child know how much he has inferred about the
family's life. How expensive is their apartment compared to oth-
ers around it? What kind of neighborhood do they live in? Are
the neighbors rich or poor? Does the family have enough money
to live comfortably? Do they have much extra money? Mama
goes to extra trouble for her fresh carp. Is Mama a smart shop-
per? Why do you think so?
Talk about the secret the family keeps from Mama. Are they
being kind or unkind when they hide their feelings about the
gefilte fish? Is such a secret dishonest? What would you do if
you were Leah or Harry?
The Children of Green Knowe. Lucy M. Boston. Orlando, FL: Har-
court, 1977. (Gr. 4-7). Tolly is alone as usual as he watches
flooded fields from the window of the train. His journey to his
great-grandmother's house ends with a boat ride from the
watery road to the doorstep of Green Knowe. The boat takes
him to a different world.
Lucy Boston has painted the scene at Green Knowe with the
subtle techniques of an impressionist. Many details, individual
points in themselves, blend together to form a richly imagined
setting. Talk with your child about how the floods, the reference
to Noah's ark, and the name Green Noah make you think of an
isolated spot where animals come for food and safety. From
Tolly's first moment in the house, boundaries between real and
unreal, large and small, past and present grow indistinct. Dis-
cuss the moment that Tolly slips into the house, when big, old
mirrors reflect images of each other so that Tolly does not know
which door is real, nor which reflection is really himself.
At times details act as heralds of the future. Why is Tolly
afraid when he hears a peacock scream? Sometimes the clues
are conflicting. Talk about the uncertainty of facts, especially on
Christmas Eve. That night two people saw St. Christopher mov-
ing, but in the morning icicles hang from the motionless statue.
232 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

The world remains mysterious and uncertain without solid evi-

dence. This is a book that deserves a second reading just to
appreciate the layers of detail that create a believable world
from an unbelievable story.
Green Knowe gives Tolly what he needed most—a family.
Granny, who has a significant name, Mrs. Oldknow, tells Tolly
stories of three children who lived at Greene Knowe in the sev-
enteenth century. Have your child compare Tolly with Granny.
How are their names linked to the names of the previous chil-
dren? How are their childhoods similar? Consider the loneliness
they both feel. How did Granny's games with the children paral-
lel Tolly's experiences? Have you ever felt that a character in a
book was almost as real as someone you knew?
After Tolly has come to. feel close to the children, after they
are like brothers and sisters, Granny leads Tolly back to a com-
fortable acceptance of the real world. Sharpen critical thinking
skills by contrasting Tolly's very down to earth Christmas guest
with Toby, Alex and Linnet. How do the earlier and contempo-
rary children play with Tolly?
Much of the magic of this book rides the wings of poetic lan-
guage. Take turns pointing out your favorite figurative expres-
sions. You might mention, "He tossed his notes up, like a juggler
tossing balls." Talk about how a voice singing could be like a ball
tossed by a juggler. Think of other similes or metaphors that
could describe singing. Discuss how metaphor, a new way of
looking at a scene, makes the scene seem more real.
How real does the book become for you? Lucy Boston wrote
the book about her own house in the English countryside. How
real do you think the story is for her?
Come Sing, Jimmy Jo . Katherine Paterson. New York: Avon, 1985.
(Gr. 5+). Let the cover open your discussion. Ask why there are
two pictures of the same boy and then compare the two pictures.
What do you see in both pictures? Do you predict the guitar will
be important? Who or what is with the boy in the pictures?
Describe the people. Where might you see people like them? Talk
about the expression on the boy's face? Is it the same in both pic-
tures. Is he happy or sad?
Katherine Paterson quietly carries her reader into James
Johnson's suddenly turbulent world. After spending his first
eleven years in his grandma's peaceful, remote house, James'
becomes Jimmy Jo, a country music star. Singing in public,
James is haunted by a fear of failure, and he simultaneously
feels cut off from his family as his relationships break apart. His
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 233

stage fright, his fear of leaving home and his loneliness are part
of the burden that comes with his gift. Your discussion can
relate James' burden to your child's own experience and under-
standing. Has he ever been afraid of going to a new school, play-
ing in a recital, or joining a new soccer team? Does everyone
sometimes experience fear of the unknown and fear of failure?
What obligation do we have to ourselves, our family and others
to challenge our abilities? What can James offer the world?
What might your son or daughter contribute to make the world
better? Talk about contributions. Do gifts need to be unusual tal-
ents like James' to be worthwhile? How would the world be
worse if we let fear of trying stifle our abilities?
Help your child appreciate James' difficulty in his new life in
the city. Talk about how the other kids at school are different
from James. How does the school secretary make James feel out
of place? Discuss the undercurrents among the adult members
of the family. How can you tell that Olive and Earl are jealous of
James' success? What details in the story tell you that something
is wrong that James does not understand? After finishing the
story, think back to clues regarding the family secrets. Talk about
James' loneliness. What prevents him from feeling close to his
family or to friends his own age?
As you and your child explore James' search for his identity,
consider the effect of Olive's and James' new names. How does
Olive change when she becomes Keri Su? Why does James feel
uncomfortable with the name Jimmy Jo? Does he feel he is the
same person? Help your child search for an explanation for the
name change besides the appeal "Keri Su" and "Jimmy Jo" are
supposed to hold for the audience?
The worst threat to James' identity is the stranger who claims
to be his father. How do James and the family try to ignore the
stranger and why is the stranger frightening? Discuss Eleazor's
response that it's not so bad to have multiple daddies. Talk about
Eleazor and James' boat ride. How does the day in the boat give
James peace and strength?
The climax of the story occurs when James confronts the
stranger. Talk about the distinction James makes between being
a father and a daddy. How does James sort out his own identity
by facing the stranger? How does James' meeting with his father
enable James to respond to Jerry Lee and Grandma's request
that he sing with the family? Talk with your child about James'
acceptance of their love and how he shares that love with the
audience. Review the sequence of Jerry's use of his glasses.
234 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Remember when Olive first took his glasses off? How did James
feel? How did the first audience appear to James? Talk about
how "James" wears classes, but "Jimmy Jo" doesn't. Notice that
James wears his glasses during the last performance. Discuss
how he no longer seems torn between being James and Jimmy
Jo. Compare his vision of the audience with his earlier impres-
sions of audiences. Compare his love for the audience to his
emotions during past performances. Evaluate the effect that
James' new love and security in his own family have on his feel-
ings for the audience.
Country Fair. Gail Gibbons. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. (Gr. 1-4).
With colorfully detailed illustrations somewhat reminiscent of
Grandma Moses, Gail Gibbons, winner of the Washington Post
Children's Book Guild Award for nonfiction, moves us through a
country fair—from the carpenters nailing stands together before
it opens to the explosion of fireworks to light up the darkness, "a
perfect way to end a perfect day." We see the high school band
leading the way from the gate for ticket purchase; we see the
tents and stands—a ring-toss booth, a bingo tent, face painting.
And the refreshment stands: popcorn, fries, pizza, chicken and
hamburgers, homemade ice cream. Children will love the illus-
trations of the ferris wheel, the carousel, the Mad Mouse ride
racing along the track to the delighted screams of the passen-
gers. Look for the Haunted House and the clowns as well as the
celebrations of fall harvest, prized fruits and vegetables awaiting
the judges who will award blue ribbons to the growers of the
best entry in each category. And don't miss the canned fruits and
vegetables, the flower arrangements, and the arts and crafts dis-
plays. You'll see farm equipment, calf judging, goats, pigs, chick-
ens, riders showing their horses—all competing for prizes. A
horse-and-buggy race fills a two-page illustration. Right before
the fireworks, a band plays country music as everyone sways to
the rhythms.
The illustrations here can be a rich source of conversation
because of their lively details and rich characterizations. You
can see how the various people feel about the events they're par-
ticipating in. And the illustrations help you tease out useful facts
from the text. For example, you can see a blacksmith at his anvil
as he hammers a hook into shape. Talk about the role of the
blacksmith, how the anvil works, how hot coals play a part in his
work.
You'll certainly want to Lalk about fairs in general. Why do
people hold fairs? Even if you're an urban dweller and have
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 235

never seen a country fair, perhaps you and your child have vis-
ited one of the street fairs in your city. What common elements
can you and your youngster find between a street fair and a
country fair? What parts of this country fair would your son or
daughter like to visit? Why? What entry could your child bring
to any of the contests?
One of the elements I like most about this book is the last few
pages, "Planning a Country Fair" and "A History of Fairs." In
other words, after she tells her story, itself rooted in realistic
details, Gibbons further explores the facts behind the fair. In the
first exposition, she shows with words and pictures how much
time and how many people it takes to put a country fair
together. We learn about committee meetings months ahead of
the event; we learn about the entertainment schedule, the choos-
ing of the judges, the promotional campaign. From the history
of fairs we learn the link to the Latin feria, meaning festival; we
read about the country fair's connections to ancient festivals of
worship; we explore the Middle Ages fairs for the Christian
saints, for example, St. Bartholomews Fair in England; we learn
that the first country fair in America was held in New Haven,
Connecticut, in 1644. I love these factual details because they
provide solid background to the imagined story of the book.
Talk about the facts with your youngster. Use the page on
planning a country fair as the starting point for a more general
discussion about planning and scheduling. What events in your
child's life require sustained planning? Why do people plan?
What advantages accrue to the thoughtful planner?
Crow Boy. Taro Yashima. New York: Viking Press, 1952. (Gr. 1-4).
Crow Boy is usually shelved with books for young children but it
is a story full of meaning for all ages. The simple language offers
depth of feeling, compassion, and a thoughtful look at human
values.
The brief story evokes the entire school career of a young boy,
from his first day until his graduation six years later. We never
know the boy's real name. At first he is Chibi, or "tiny boy," a
timid, lonely child, unable to do his lessons or to make a friend
at school. Once you establish that fact, ask your child to predict
what may happen.
Year after year Chibi remains an outcast until, in his last year,
a friendly new teacher discovers how much Chibi knows about
the garden outside the classroom. What does your child infer
about the new teacher? Compare him to the old teacher and to
Chibi's classmates. Why might this teacher be interested in
236 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Chibi? In all those years the whole school had noticed Chibi only
to give him a derisive name. No one was prepared to see "stupid"
Chibi on stage at the talent show. But Chibi's performance
awoke a new feeling in all his classmates. Through imitation of
the crows' sounds Chibi had heard on his long walk to and from
school each day, everyone saw him afresh and suddenly appreci-
ated his arduous daily trek to school.
Talk about how this book makes you feel. Do you like Chibi?
Have you known anyone who didn't seem smart and was left out
at school? Do your feelings change as you read the story? What
do you think Chibi is like in the beginning? Do you feel sorry for
him? What do you think about him when he becomes Crow
Boy? Does Chibi change? Help your child articulate the emo-
tions experienced in the story. Talk about feelings of failure and
loneliness, of wrongdoing and sadness. Describe Crow Boy's
pride and self satisfaction as he does his family's work. How
would you describe the feelings of the talent show audience as
they learn that Chibi was the only member of the class with per-
fect attendance? What generalizations can you draw from Crow
Boy?
Taro Yashima's illustrations of a Japanese village create a
scene distant from an American child's neighborhood, yet the
text could describe an American school. Look at the pictures
before reading the book with your youngster. Talk about how the
same problems can arise in two very different cultures. Are
kindergartners ever afraid on the first day at your school? Why?
Is there anyone in your school who can't do the regular lessons?
How does such a child feel about being in school? Has anyone in
your class ever spent the day looking at the ceiling or out the
window? What would happen to Chibi at your school? What
might have happened if Chibi had had his last teacher all his
years at school?
The Cr y o f th e Crow. Jean Craighead George. New York: Harper-
Collins, 1980. (Gr. 3-7). Mandy understands why her father and
brothers kill the crafty and hungry crows that threaten their pre-
cious strawberry crop. Yet she hates the sound of their guns and
secretly adopts a baby crow whom she names Nina Torrence.
Children will get caught up in the excitement of learning the
meaning of the crows' cries—sounds of warning, the signal to
search for food, the call to join the group. While Mandy learns to
distinguish to sounds of the crows, Nina Torrence perfectly
mimics several phrases in English. Talk about what your child
can infer about Mandy s and Nina Torrence's learning. Especially
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 237

mysterious is a phrase uttered by Nina's parents' killer, a phrase

that the young crow learned during the fearful attack on the
nest. Discovering the speaker of the phrase—and hence the killer
of the crows—is an important clue in predicting the outcome of
the book. As your child progresses through the book, ask who
might have said, "I've got you."
Here is an excellent opportunity to discuss with your child
what real human language is. How do the crows learn to com-
municate with each other? How do crows learn human lan-
guage? How do crows use human language?
Fearing that growing independence will entice her away,
Mandy separates Nina Torrence from the wild crows despite her
mother's warning that later Nina will be too old to join the wild
crows and will have to live with people. Discuss with your child
how Mandy tries to keep Nina Torrence a baby. Compare
Mandy's treatment of Nina with the way Mandy s mother, Bar-
bara, treats her. Does Barbara encourage Mandy to be indepen-
dent? How does Mandy have to make adult decisions in dealing
with the crow? Discuss why Mandy ignores the ominous warn-
ing that a once-injured crow like Nina might seriously endanger
her attacker. How might Nina become dangerous?
Relations among family members are crucial to the outcome
of the novel. In what way does Mandy's opinion of her father
change? Is her father understanding? How are the women of the
family different from the men? What generalizations can you
draw about them? How do the nurturing women contrast with
the hunter males? How does this contrast reflect men's and
women's behavior in your surroundings? Discuss why Mandy's
younger brother, Drummer, wants so desperately to be like his
father and older brothers.
Learning about a facet of the natural world is another advan-
tage of this book. Few of us have felt much curiosity about ugly,
raucous crows. Yet here their feathers are a soft, beautiful black.
Their noise is intriguing, full of meaning. Their abilities extend
far past our expectations for a mere bird. What does the author
want us to realize about the discoveries we can make if we look
carefully enough at the animal world?
Eclipse; Darkness i n Daytime. Franklyn M. Branley. New York:
Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973, 1988. (Gr. 1-3). What could be more
exciting than watching the sun disappear! Branley's book is a
colorful and artistic study of what an eclipse is and what eclipses
have meant to people through the ages. Its illustrations rival
those of good picture books. In addition to teaching physical sci-
238 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

ence, Eclipse also shows how people have reacted to eclipses

through the ages. Using the book as a springboard, a young
reader can imagine how ancient people looked at the world and
why people were afraid when the sun disappeared. Why did
ancient people who believed the eclipse was caused by a dragon
eating the sun have reason to think their theory was correct?
Why did their actions seem effective?
Eclipse brings real scientific information within the reach of a
beginning reader. The vocabulary is limited; the text is not too
long. However, such condensed information makes greater
demands on your child's skills. Because the author wants to
avoid difficult words or long paragraphs for beginning readers,
many of these transitional expressions that guide us through our
reading are missing. Help your child mark the beginning of new
topics. When does the author tell you what an eclipse is? When
does the section on animals' reactions to an eclipse begin?
Where does the story of the ancient theory of the dragon begin?
In keeping with the needs of beginning readers, Branley
explains new vocabulary carefully, but the short text provides no
opportunity to reuse a new word frequently and in varied con-
texts. 1 would suggest providing extra practice with such words.
For instance, in the text the word "solar" is defined as "of the
sun." Have your child guess at definitions for expressions con-
taining the word "solar." Use words like "solar energy," "solar
heat," or the "solar system." What do those expressions mean?
Play with the words. What would a "solar burn" be or a "solar
dial"?
Finally, bring the eclipse into your child's own life. Read the
times and places future eclipses will occur. Talk about how old
your child will be when future eclipses take place and where on
the globe she would have to be to see it. Can she predict what
things will be like in her immediate surroundings if she should
experience an eclipse?
Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like. Jay Williams. New
York: Macmillan, 1976. (Gr. K-3). Mercer Mayer's beautiful illus-
trations add an exotic air to Jay Williams tale set in China. When
you and your child pick up the book, talk about the scene on the
cover. Does it look like any place you have been before? Do you
see a dragon in the picture? Does it look like dragons you have
pictured before? Talk about the bald, old, fat man sitting in the
foreground. Is he rich or poor? How can you tell? Would you
like to know him? Why?
Wild horsemen threaten the city of Wu on the northern bor-
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 239

der of China. With an army that can look brave, but cannot fight
well, the Mandarin and the councilors decide their best hope is
to pray to the Cloud Dragon. The next day Han, a poor road
sweeper, sees a little, bald man who declares that he is the
dragon. But the Mandarin and his cohorts rudely laugh at the
old man's offer to save the city provided they treat him with
courtesy. Only poor Han extends hospitality to the stranger. In
thanks to Han alone, the man, who is indeed a dragon, saves the
city.
Direct your child's attention to the attitude of the city's rulers
toward the dragon. How does their reaction contrast to Hans?
Think about what each person expects a dragon to look like.
How are all the councilors similar to their expectations of what
a dragon will look like? What conclusions can your child draw
about the Mandarin and his advisers? How does their image of a
dragon reflect their own place in life? What generalization can
you make about the Mandarin and his councilors?
Lead your child to discover why the dragon chose to appear
as an old man. Would the dragon know what the councilors
were really like if he had appeared as they expected him to be?
What keeps the important people from recognizing the dragon?
Suggest that your child contrast Han and the councilors. Why is
Han the one who can learn about the dragon? What can your
child conclude about the Mandarin when he says, "But best of
all ... now we know what a dragon looks like. He looks like a
small, fat, bald old man"?
Have your son or daughter compare this story to other stories
such as "The Emperor's New Clothes." What kind of person sees
the truth in both stories? Do you know any other stories in
which an important figure comes disguised as a stranger in
order to test a person's real character?
Han receives two rewards—one from the dragon and one
from the city. Talk about the differences between the two
rewards. Compare the beautiful vision of the dragon in the sky
with the gold pieces and the important sounding new title, "The
Honorable Defender of the City." How does each gift reflect the
character of the giver? Ask your child what she thinks is the
value of each gift.
Ferret i n th e Bedroom, Lizards i n th e Fridge. Bill Wallace. New
York: Holiday House, 1986. Bill Wallace's opening pages carry
the reader into the sixth-graders' world during a school election.
Liz Robbins, a candidate for sixth grade class president, tells the
story. Help your child appreciate how Liz's language creates a
240 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

grade school atmosphere. Find expressions like "I felt like a real
snot" or "the microphone was real skinny." How would the book
be changed if the narrator said, "I felt extremely disappointed in
myself" or "the microphone was cylindrical, about one inch in
diameter"? Here, attention to denotation and connotation really
pays off.
Despite the enthusiastic campaign plans of her friend Sally,
Liz guesses that her chances of beating sleek and gorgeous Jo
Donna Hunt are slim. Mishaps with the exotic menagerie that
Liz's zoologist father keeps at their house plague Liz's campaign.
As Liz's popularity plummets, even the cute new boy at school
calls her by her hated old nickname, Lizard, proof that her dad's
animals spoil her image at school.
You and your child can discuss whether having exotic ani-
mals indicates that the family is as unusual as Liz complains.
Discuss how Liz' parents act, judging how much they are like
typical parents. To what extent does Liz's concern with being dif-
ferent come from the opinions of Sally and the girls at the cam-
paign meetings?
Are the girls fair when they get upset over the mishaps with
the animals? These situations are fun to discuss not only
because the incidents are wild and comic, but also because you
can lead your young reader beyond a simple yes or no answer.
Certainly her friends would be distressed, but is their complete
rejection of Liz justified? Have your child evaluate the situation
and predict how her own classmates would react in the same sit-
uation.
As you discuss Liz's final campaign speech, you can focus on
the main themes of the novel. Explore the differences between
desire for popularity and loyalty to friends (including relatives).
How has Liz's need to be popular changed? Compare Sally's
betrayal of Liz when threatened by Jo Donna's "Miss Piggy"
posters to Liz's loyalty to her father and their animals.
Finally, discuss what Liz learns about Shane Garrison in the
last chapter in light of the sequence of events: Shane's initial
friendliness, Liz's response, the speech, the election and their
friendship. How would the conclusion have been less satisfying
if Liz had learned earlier of Shane's animals?
Five Finger Discount. Barthe de Clements. New York: Delacorte
Press, 1989. (Gr. 4+). In a small town next to the reformatory
Jerry keeps his identity secret. He is a PK, a prisoners kid. Only
two other kids know his secret, but one, Edward Troller, uses it
for blackmail. Keeping slippery, mean, little Troller from going
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 241

public is difficult for Jerry, who wants to make friends and avoid
trouble in school.
Jerry can trust his secret with Grace, the girl next door. Grace
introduced herself as a PK, but her family doesn't seem like
Jerry's. Ask your son or daughter to look for clues for what PK
means in Grace's family. What can your child infer from the use
of initials "PK" to identify the children instead of the words they
refer to? After discovering what kind of PK Grace is, consider
each family's effect on its children.
What can you generalize about children growing to be like
their parents? Where do you see the mistakes of the parents
reflected in the book's children? Do children in general reflect
their parents? Talk about theft in Jerry's family, meanness in
Trailer's, and manipulation in Grace's.
Explore together the author's attitude toward theft. What
character seems to reflect the author's own ideas? Also look for
the author's opinions as you see Jerry's understanding develop.
First investigate Jerry's lack of concern for anyone owning or
losing the lumber for the tree fort. Discuss how his awareness of
theft changes during the story. What is his main worry when he
takes the sandals? How does the theft of his jacket teach him
about the results of theft? Study the influence of Grace's com-
ments. Is it good for Jerry to feel miserable and embarrassed?
Does Jerry reach greater understanding after he worries about
others thinking of him as a thief? What generalizations can you
draw here?
Ask your youngster to discuss his prediction of the future for
Jerry and his dad. Will they keep the promise they made looking
at the North Star? What has Jerry seen in his father's face when
it looked like a Halloween pumpkin caved in with age? Encour-
age your young reader to work toward a judgment of Jerry's dad
and to support that judgment with concrete details. Weigh the
comment of Jerry's gradmother, his dad's last mistake with the
shoes, and his dad's concern for Jerry's future.
De Clements' portrayal of Grace's morality makes a good
back-drop to the questions of theft in Jerry's family. Discuss
Grace's proficiency at manipulating her mother. What can you
conclude about Grace's honesty? What do you think of the way
Grace won the pumpkin contest? Did she cheat? Talk about the
different circumstances of Grace's life, especially the gifts of her
rich grandmother. What does Jerry mean when he says, "Life is
simple when you're in the middle of your family eating roast
chicken"?
242 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

When Grace's father suggests that each face reflects its

owner's personal history, Jerry begins to look closely at faces, the
Trollers' mean, pinched faces, Grace's family's full, innocent
faces, and finally his father's broken face. Talk about faces as
windows to drawing conclusions about people's character.
The Friendship. Mildred Taylor. New York: Dial Press, 1987. (Gr.
2-6). A good way to start talking about this book after your
youngster reads it is to question whose friendship is referred to
in the title. The story centers on a confrontation between a white
store keeper and an old black man. It is told by Cassie, a nine
year old black girl, who witnessed the incident with her broth-
ers. Is the friendship between Tom Bee and storekeeper John
Wallace? If so, is it a real friendship? What is the denotation of
the word friendship? The connotation?
Talk about how Cassie lends her point of view to the story.
Cassie and her brothers have an unpleasant encounter in the
store before Tom Bee arrives. What does their experience tell
you about the Wallaces? What might Dewberry Wallace leave
out if he were telling the story? How would the story be different
again if Jeremy Simms, the white boy, had told it? Could Tom
Bee add other pieces to the story? How might John Wallace tell
the story?
Details in the descriptions allow the reader to infer a great
deal about the lives of the characters. Notice the date on the new
catalog in the store. When does the incident take place? What
conclusions can you and your child draw about the economy in
1933? Talk about the size of the store and its sparsely-covered
shelves. What do you conclude on the basis of these details?
Notice how everyone is dressed, both black and white. Does any-
one in the book wear expensive clothes? Does anyone have any
extra money? Do any of the kids get much candy? Talk about the
speech of the characters. What can you conclude about their
styles of life from their way of talking? Are there any differences
in the way they speak?
Discuss the significance of the names blacks and whites use
for each other. Talk about the status that "Mister" carries and
why that status is important to the white people in that area.
After talking about the area's customs, think about why John
Wallace says he must "save face." Explain this metaphor to your
child. Think about what other people are saying. Notice, how-
ever, whom the children respect. Which person in the book actu-
ally is called "mister"? Discuss what conclusions you can draw
regarding John Wallace's motives for insisting on the "mister"
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 243

with his name. What do you know about the thoughts of the
other whites in the store? Do you predict that John Wallace will
be prosecuted for using his gun?
Ask why Tom decided to call John Wallace by his first name
after so many years. Do you think Tom always wanted to call
him John? Why does Tom yell "John" over and over almost like a
challenge in the last lines of the book?
Consider what Tom's emotions might be because his friend-
ship was not acknowledged for so long. What friendship exists
between Tom Bee and John Wallace now? Why, would you con-
clude, has John Wallace not acknowledged Tom Bee for many
years? Finally, what generalizations can you make about friend-
ship from this book?
Grandfather's Journey. Allen Say. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.
(Gr. 1-4). In this Caldecott Medal winner, Allen Say combines a
moving tale of love of two countries with breathtakingly beauti-
ful illustrations that have the crisp fidelity of photographs.
Grandfather's journey starts when as a young man he leaves
Japan to see the New World. He is amazed by the beauty he
finds there—rock sculptures, endless farm fields like the sea, fac-
tories, buildings, mountains, and rivers. After he returns home
and marries, he and his bride move to San Francisco, where
they have a baby girl. Unable to forget his homeland, Grandfa-
ther travels back to Japan when his daughter is nearly grown,
and rejoices in his friends and the familiar landscape. He buys a
house in a large city nearby; his daughter marries; and the
author is born to the new couple. Grandfather talks often of Cal-
ifornia and plans a trip—but war interrupts everyone's life, and
he never gets to see his beloved California again. The author
does get to California, but like his grandfather, he longs for
Japan. "The funny thing is," he says poignantly, "the moment I
am in one country, I am homesick for the other." Say concludes
that he now understands his grandfather and misses him very
much.
Pay attention to the vocabulary here, particularly words like
sculpture, bewildered, and towering, all of which your child
should be able to define using both the context and the excellent
illustrations. Build on inferential skills by asking why Grandfa-
ther surrounded himself with songbirds and why the Japanese
village "was not a place for a daughter from San Francisco."
What does Say mean when he says that the falling of bombs dur-
ing the war "scattered our lives like leaves in a storm"?
See if you and your youngster can test some of the generaliza-
244 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

tions that can emerge from this book. Why do people get lonely
for places where they no longer live? When people leave their
homelands for adventure or other reasons, do they find what
they expect? What are some of the advantages in moving to a
new country? some of the difficulties? Would your child like to
move to another part of the world, even for a short time?
The Great School Lunch Rebellion. David Greenberg. New York:
Bantam, 1989. (Gr. 1-5). The Great School Lunch Rebellion is
perfect for the child who is moving beyond easy readers, but its
humor also can appeal to children through fifth grade. The out-
of-hand food fight, in the tradition of Tom Sawyer and Huck
Finn, brings out the enjoyment we have all had in celebrating
rebellion in children's literature. Looking at the cover of the
book before reading it, your child can infer where the scene
takes place. Ask what the food looks like on the trays. Do the
kids object to having food in their hair? How can you tell? Ask
your child to describe the teacher. What might she be shouting?
Compare the expressions on the children's faces with the
teacher's expression. When your child begins reading, he will
immediately notice how the author exaggerates the awful quali-
ties of school lunches. Your child may exclaim that the descrip-
tion, although fun to read, is obviously overstated. Talk about
the emotions the author evokes. Although your school lunch
doesn't literally "hop away on grimy little feet" and it doesn't
actually make squirrels fall over dead, does this description
make you feel what it's like to look at a bad lunch? This descrip-
tion is an example of metaphorical language. Look for other
examples of exaggerated metaphors or other figures. What does
the author mean when he says that Jay once ate a tray? See if
your child thinks that Jay's teeth could bite through plastic, or is
the author using a metaphor to imply that Jay was willing to eat
just about anything served to him? What is the author intending
when he describes "soup made from monkey spit/Chunks of
chewed-up bubble gum/And sweaty catchers mitt"?
The boy narrator of the story uses wonderful techniques in
his arguments justifying the rebellion. What does your child pre-
dict as the rebellions outcome? How does his prediction match
the story? After finishing the story, your child might enjoy creat-
ing alternate endings for the story—really another form of pre-
dicting outcomes. Be sure the endings result logically from the
preceding events.
Children will laugh over the ironic humor of the conclusion.
Depending on the maturity of your child, you may want simply
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 245

to discuss the humor here, or you may want to introduce the

concept of irony. "As a mark of our deep gratitude/It's camel liver
stew!" proclaims the principal to perfect Teddy who alone gets to
eat that lunch. What does the author really mean? Is camel liver
stew a special treat?
Enjoy the flow of language and the rhyme. Ask your child
what the story would be like if it didn't have rhyme. Would it be
as funny? Would it sound as good?
Throughout, enjoy the fantasy and freedom of a desire never
to be fulfilled in real life!
How t o Ea t Fried Worms. Thomas Rockwell. New York: Dell-Year-
ling Books, 1973. (Gr. 3-6). Thomas Rockwell has created a
perennial favorite in his saga of worm eating. Alan challenges
his friend Billy to eat fifteen worms in fifteen days. The resulting
fifty dollar bet pits Alan and his partner Joe against Billy and his
helper Tom. The vivid personalities of the boys and their imagi-
native trickery make ideal entertainment for middle graders.
What do you infer about Alan's personality from the challenge
he proposes? And about Billy's from his accepting it?
Talk about how the boys differ from each other. Who is the
most determined? the most persuasive? the most cunning? How
does Joe exploit Billy's weaknesses? Which kind of trick is Billy
good at figuring out? Would anyone you know take a bet like
Billy's? Would any of your friends enjoy daring you to do some-
thing you wouldn't like to do?
What would the boys be like in other situations? Develop
greater understanding of the characters by encouraging your
youngster to predict how the boys would act in various situa-
tions. Imagine them at the zoo with monkeys escaping from
their cage. Would anyone try to scare the monkeys back into the
cage? Would any of the boys try to find someone else to take the
blame? Might one of them have been responsible for the mon-
keys' escape in the first place?
Is the author more sympathetic to one side or the other? Help
your child evaluate the authors sympathies. Do chapter titles indi-
cate a preference for one side? (Parents may have to provide some
historical background for the chapter titles derived from World
War II events.) What other clues suggest the authors sympathies?
Talk about the struggle in the book and your child's own reac-
tion to it. When does the competition get more intense? When
does the author make the bet look like a full-fledged war? Do
you want Billy to win? Would you feel bad if he lost after eating
all but one worm?
246 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Help your son or daughter evaluate the fairness of the bet. Is

eating fifteen worms worth fifty dollars? What would be the
worst thing you would do to win fifty dollars? Do you think Billy
earned his money?
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. Bettie Bao Lord. New
York: Harper, 1984. (Gr 3-7). Shirley Temple Wong, a character
based largely on the author's own life, leaves her clan's large
home in China for an apartment in Brooklyn in 1947, the year of
the boar, and also the year that Jackie Robinson was the rookie
hero of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Life in Brooklyn is hard and
lonely until Shirley learns to play baseball. Through baseball she
at last makes friends in her new country, and with them she
cheers Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers to the pennant and the
World Series against the New York Yankees. Baseball and Jackie
Robinson become symbols for life in the United States, symbols
of the success possible for every person.
The old optimism of faith in individual capabilities blends
with recent recognition of cultural diversity. Shirley enters P.S.
08 understanding nothing of the language or customs of her
classmates. Her strong spirit and quick mind help her through
her adjustment to American society. Do prereading warmups: Do
you know anyone who has come from a foreign country? What
were their experiences like? After reading the book, talk about
how Shirley's situation helps other students see the way interna-
tional students feel when they enter American schools? Might
some of them have more trouble than Shirley? Why or why not?
Are any of Shirley's problems experienced by all students?
One day Shirley's teacher used the game of baseball to illus-
trate how each person fits into American society. Talk about how
each team member plays for himself and for the team. Compare
how baseball teams work together with how football, soccer, or
basketball teams work together. Where do you see each person
play as an individual, while still having his or her achievements
help the team as a whole? Which sports subordinate individual
play to team play where an assist to a teammate is as good as a
score?
Why does Shirley identify with Jackie Robinson? How does
Jackie Robinson stand for minorities in general? How do
minorities get along with each other in Shirley's school? How
does your school compare to Shirley's?
Compare the enthusiasm Shirley eventually comes to feel for
America with her love for her old home and family in China. If
you have ever moved from one place to another, did you eventu-
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 247

ally wish that you could live in both places? Retell the story of
the Chinese girl who became two people to live two separate
lives which eventually merged back into one life. Discuss what
this story means to Shirley.
Talk about how Shirley will be a big sister to her baby
brother. What will she teach him? How will her teaching bring
together her American life and her Chinese life?
Joyful Noise. Paul Fleischman. New York: Harper, Collins, 1988. (Gr.
3+). Joyful Noise is poetry to be read aloud by two voices, which
echo and blend with each other, creating an impressionistic
image of the seasons as lived by insects. In these poems you will
find humor, play, and new perspectives.
Help your child read it through for vocabulary and meaning
before you "perform" it together. (Holding a 3 x 5 card or book-
mark under the line can help you both come in on cue.) Take
turns choosing your favorite passage.
Enjoy the musical rhythm. Talk about how the words make
you feel as you consider both connotation and denotation.
Vocabulary and assumed knowledge may be challenging for
younger readers, yet children meet that challenge. Some words
like "vaulting" in "Grasshoppers" become clear from context.
Before reading "Mayflies" discuss the life cycle of this insect who
lives its full life in one day. The echoing voices then will reflect
the poignant contrast of our time and a mayfly's time. Talk about
still another perspective of time in the "redwood centuries" later
in the poem for another vision of time and a contrasting form of
life.
As you read, notice how you see the world through different
eyes. Sometimes it is humorous as in the moth's serenade to the
porch light, "I drink your light like nectar." Sometimes it is won-
drous like the chrysalis' description of snow. Enter and enjoy
this world created by words.
At some point you may want to separate what is hard fact and
what is a human vision imprinted on an insect's state in life. For
example, in "Honeybees," discuss what the poem tells about a
bee's daily life. Yet what can we know about the mind of a bee?
What part of the poem is really a human thought? Let such dis-
cussions arise naturally, perhaps after you have incorporated the
emotional impact of the poem into your literary life. Personifica-
tion characterizes much of the poetry here.
Jumanji. Chris Van Allsburg. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. (Gr.
3+). As usual, author Chris Van Allsburg takes the reader out of
every day reality. In the almost surrealistic events here, you will
248 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

find numerous openings for discussion. Imagine two typical

children, bored with their toys, finding under a tree a board
game labeled "especially designed for the bored and restless."
Ask your child to pick out details in the game's instructions that
are important clues to the outcome of the plot. Does it seem
strange that the game will not end until one player reaches the
last square and yells "Jumanji"? Appreciate Peter's ironic com-
ment on the excitement of the game when he lands on the
square with the inscription, "Lion attacks, move back two
spaces." What has happened to our normal sense of reality
when a lion appears at that moment? Talk about the children's
personalities. Are they cowardly or are they brave? What can
your child infer about these kids when Peter and Judy realize
they must face the dangers of the jungle—lions, monkey, hip-
pos, a volcano, and snakes—in order to finish the game and get
rid of the lion?
Your child can draw much information through inference
both from the text and from the illustrations. Looking at the
stark neatness of the house, what can you conclude about the
lifestyle of the family? Why would you conclude that the mon-
keys and hippopotamuses are especially out of place in this par-
ticular house? Why would Mother be more upset with the mon-
keys' mess than the lion's roar?
Your child also has probably inferred knowledge about the
childrens' age and their relations with their parents. How old do
the children appear in the illustrations? What games do they
play? (The toys that the children are playing with in the pictures
seem to be for younger children. This discrepancy might be con-
fusing.) How well do they read? The parents trust the children
home alone. Do the children worry about keeping the house neat
for their parents?
Enjoy the scene of the adults' return. Does Mother expect
them to have had an exciting afternoon? What reaction tells you
that the adults don't believe the children's adventures occurred?
Talk about the language the parents use with the children. What
can you infer about the parents' real interest in the children's
afternoon? You and your child can share your explanations of
why the adults' heads are not shown in the illustrations.
I love the impact of the final page. Talk about what Judy and
Peter know about the game as they watch Daniel and Walter
carry it home. In your conversation encourage your child to pull
together the knowledge that she has of the game and her knowl-
edge of Daniel and Walter. What does she conclude when she
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 249

puts that knowledge together? What prediction can be made for

Daniel's and Walter's day?
Last On e Home I s a Green Pig. Edith Thatcher Hurd. New York:
Harper Collins, 1959. (Gr. K-3). When Duck invites him to race
home, Monkey replies, "Last one home is a green pig." Finding
himself behind, Duck soon hitches a ride on a girl's bicycle only
to be left behind when Monkey finds a horse to ride. The race's
speed escalates until both Duck and Monkey are flying home,
the winner uncertain until the last second. Beginning readers
will love the action and quick change of pace delineated with
just a few words.
Compare each new vehicle with the one before. What hap-
pens each time Duck or Monkey gets something new to ride on?
What happens each time you hear "up the hill" and "down the
hill"? Help your child generalize about the increased speed of
new modes of travel.
You may need to talk about why Duck didn't fly home in the
first place. Did he think it might be unfair? Does it make a better
story this way? Would monkey have raced a flying duck? What
other reasons can you think of?
Develop your child's ability to predict the outcome of a story
by discussing who has the advantage at the beginning of the
race? Who can run faster? Who is ahead? Were you surprised at
the end of the story?
In reading the story through you can infer a great deal about
Monkey's and Duck's feelings for each other. Pose questions
about Duck's and Monkey's friendship. Do you like Monkey's
words to Duck after the race? What do you think they did the
next day? What else might Monkey have said? How would that
comment make Duck feel?
Help your child evaluate the race by relating it to his own
experience. Would you like to give a racer a ride on your bike?
Do you like races yourself? How is Monkey and Duck's race dif-
ferent from races you have been in? What is the difference
between being tricky and cheating in a race?
The Living Earth. Eleonore Schmid. New York: North-South Books,
1994. (Gr. 3-6). Lavishly illustrated by the author in vibrant
earth tones of green and brown, The Living Earth is a paean to
the earth's cycle of life. I love the way the illustrations fill the
pages completely over a two-page spread, with the words of the
story printed on the bottom of each page.
Schmid talks about the changes we see and those we don't—
water seeping into mountains, only to freeze and crack the rock,
250 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

for example. She describes the earth's layers and the filtration
effect of topsoil, as well as the growth of seeds by means of min-
eral release from humus. Detailed illustrations of plants and
roots enhance the prose. We learn about and see the living
organisms in soil and the constantly renewing nature of the
earth. We also see the larger animals that live in the earth, from
worms and snails to mice, moles, and foxes. Schmid sees the
removal of forests to make new fields for farms as part of the
earth's cycle, and she follows the farmer through tilling, plant-
ing, and harvesting crops. Yet she reminds us of the problems
caused by the use of chemicals to destroy insects and plant dis-
eases. She also points out the sacrifices we make in harvesting
natural resources: "What has taken nature millions of years to
create," she writes, "is being used up by humans in a very short
time."
As you read this book to or with your child, use the wonderful
illustrations to explore the themes. On the next to the last page,
for example, ask your youngster to identify as many objects as
she can. You'll see radishes, dandelions, onions, and petunias.
Look closely and you'll see lady bugs, a snail, and a butterfly.
Schmid recommends that the reader grab a handful of earth, sift
it through the fingers, and smell it. You and your child do these
activities together, talking about your impressions as you go
along. Be sure to talk about the "city pages," where Schmid
points out that even amid asphalt and concrete "the smallest
patch of city soil can support the cycle of life."
What is your son or daughter's view of the cutting down of
forests? of the use of pesticides? Talk about the advantages and
harm that these acts cause. How can we use science and nature
to everyone's advantage without destroying the planet?
Maia; A Dinosaur Grows Up . John R. Horner and James Gorman.
Courage Books, 1987; [First published by Museum of the Rock-
ies, Bozeman MT, 1985]. (Gr. 2-5). Maia gives a picture of one
dinosaur, a maiasaura, from the day she hatches until she cares
for her own young. Maia, who is quick and lucky, escapes the
perils that plague baby dinosaurs, especially raids by meat eat-
ing Troodons who snatch baby maiasaurs from nests. John
Horner, a noted authority on dinosaurs, paints the life of one
type of dinosaur as researchers now think it was lived. Maia's
mother feeds Maia and her siblings when they are too small to
leave the nest and later teaches them where to find their own
food.
ere is an excellent opportunity to distinguish fact from fie-
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 251

tion. Although fictional, the dinosaur Maia was created to be

typical of maiasaura. Ask if Maia herself really lived. Could the
things that happened to Maia have happened to real maiasaurs?
Could they have hatched like Maia? Do you think Troodon
snatched the babies as they do in the story?
Have your child think about Maia in the egg and about how
she hatched. Do we know whether baby dinosaurs squeaked
inside the eggs? Could we find out? What would make us think
that they might squeak? (Have you ever witnessed eggs hatch-
ing?) Could we find out what noises dinosaurs made?
Using the story of Maia, lead your child to make generaliza-
tions about maiasaurs. What would they eat? How fast would
they grow? How would they learn where to find berries to eat?
Help your child draw conclusions about the size and ferocity of
the Troodon? Were adult maiasaurs afraid of Troodon? Were the
babies afraid of them? What protected the babies from Troodon?
When could the Troodon snatch the babies?
Talk about how new discoveries—for dinosaurs the discovery
of new fossils—change scientific theories or guesses. Why was
the old theory that all dinosaurs closely resembled modern
lizards very plausible and reasonable until recent fossil discover-
ies showed dinosaur families nesting together as birds do? Talk
about how our new ideas will probably be changed in the future.
Matilda. Roald Dahl. New York: Viking, 1988. (Gr. 3-7). In this
recent book Roald Dahl uses the same elements that created the
success of James and the Giant Peach. Again you will find a
sweet, sympathetic child in the care of the worst possible
guardians. In addition to having evil parents, Matilda is also up
against a school principal named Trunchbull whose goal is to
squash and terrify as many children as possible. Matilda, how-
ever, does not accept injustice without fighting back, and her
brilliant mind more than makes up for the disadvantage of being
young and small.
Dahl's humorous use of language is a delight to children.
Some adults may hesitate to expose youngsters to his vivid
descriptions, but children love them in the same way they love
the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are and the giants "Fe, fi,
fo, fum" in "Jack and the Beanstalk." Share your feelings about
Miss Honey's warning that Trunchbull "can liquidise you like a
carrot in a kitchen blender." Talk about how Dahl used metaphor
in comparing Matilda to a scab that her parents must put up
with until they can cast her off.
Perhaps your child will notice the difference between British
252 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

and American English. He will certainly notice the word "telly"

for "TV," and will easily guess its meaning. Other British expres-
sions will take more thought to understand. What does it mean
for Matilda's dad to "diddle a customer"? Help your child leam
to infer other meanings from illustrations or from context. Look
at the picture on page 35 and talk about Mr. Wormwood "skulk-
ing" around the room with his hat glued on. Ask how he is mov-
ing. Does he want to be seen? You might also figure out what
brogues are. (Since they are on Miss TrunchbuH's feet, they must
be shoes.) Knowing TrunchbuH's physique and personality, you
can guess that they are heavy, sturdy shoes, not delicate sandals
or high heels.
Dahl's characters are either good or bad, and they are fun to
describe and draw conclusions about: the dishonest used car
salesman, the dumb blond with heavy make-up who watches
soap operas and plays bingo, the huge tyrant who is out to get
everyone. What generalizations can you make about the villains?
What do they think about children? Are they as smart as the
children? What happens to the villains in the end—do they get
their reward?
Discuss the punishments of the villains. Did justice prevail?
Did the just get rewarded? Can you make a judgment about jus-
tice when both the crime and the retribution are so exaggerated
as to be unreal?
Nate th e Great an d th e Sticky Case. Marjorie Weinman Sharmat.
New York: Dell, 1978. (Gr. K-3). Nate the Great, hero of a series
of detective stories for beginning readers, here attacks the sticky
case of the missing dinosaur stamp. I like this book for the
humor and creative problem solving it provides within the limits
of a simplified reading format. Before your child starts reading,
look at the picture at the front of the book. Ask what Nate is
doing. What docs he have in his hand, and what is its purpose?
What is Nate looking at through the magnifying glass? Talk
about how Nate is dressed. What makes him look like a detec-
tive?
Invite your child to enjoy the play with words as Nate gets
stuck on the sticky case, as he realizes that there are "two sides
to every stamp," and as he searches for "something big that is
small." Friend Claude loses things often, but doesn't "lose his
way." Laugh together at this humor and talk about the varied
meanings of the words.
In this case, detective Nate helps his friend Claude find his
missing stegosaurus stamp. One rainy afternoon after Claude
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 253

has shown three friends his dinosaur stamps, his favorite, the
stegosaurus stamp, turns up missing. Questioning witnesses in
true detective fashion, Nate learns that the stamp had been on
the edge of the table, but that it has disappeared from the room.
Nate's first great idea, to check out the dinosaur museum for
clues, is a dud that leads nowhere. Help your child appreciate
Nate's rethinking of the problem when his first hypothesis does-
n't pan out. Talk about how Nate approaches the question in a
new way. Ask about what other information Nate considers as he
rethinks his problem. Which details become clues? Think about
the rain and the activities of the various children. Remember the
sequences of events. Who arrived at the house before the rain.
Who arrived after the rain? How did Sludge help discover the
most important clue?
Several passages demand that the reader infer meaning. For
instance, Annie thinks that the stegosaurus is pretty while Nate
finds it ugly. To understand this contrast the reader must under-
stand how Annie's and Nate's feelings for her dog, Fang, are
reflected in their attitudes towards the dinosaur which Fang
resembles. Annie, of course, loves Fang and finds his smile
adorable. Nate, on the other hand, is actually afraid of Fang.
Talk about how the reader realizes Nate fears Fang when Nate
decides it is time to go home after seeing Fang smile. Again
Nate's fear can be inferred when he is glad that the stegosaurus
in the museum is not capable of doing anything. Finally the
active reader can infer why Rosamond was selling tuna cans and
cat hairs at the yard sale. A few "why" questions on these inci-
dents can help your child practice her skill in drawing inferences
or can illuminate her already developed abilities.
Obadiah the Bold. Brinton Turkle. New York: Viking Press, 1965 (Gr.
3-6). Obadiah admires bravery and hopes someday to become a
bold pirate. He builds a dream and sees it destroyed, but rebuilds
his original dream to form a new and better vision of the future.
Prepare your son or daughter by discussing the book's cover.
Talk about the boy with the spyglass. Do you think the boy is
Obadiah? Look at the sailing ship and talk about where the boy
is. Can you infer from the way he is dressed when the story takes
place? What might he be looking at with his spyglass? Talk
about what adventures Obadiah might be dreaming about.
Obadiah's dream of becoming a pirate is destroyed during a
game in which Obadiah and his brothers play pirate. Help your
child see that this is a pivotal point in the story. Compare what
actually happened to Obadiah as a pirate during the game to the
254 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

image of a pirate's life that Obadiah had pictured. What had

Obadiah admired about pirates? Could Obadiah see the pirate as
admirable while he was jailed and made to walk the plank?
What does Obadiah's ignoring his spyglass indicate about what
has happened to his desire to become a pirate?
After losing his dream of becoming a pirate, Obadiah seeks
advice from his father. Discuss with your son or daughter what
we know about Father and how Father helps Obadiah regain his
dream for the future. What can your child infer about Father's
willingness to stop his work to talk to Obadiah? Does Obadiah
expect Father to be sympathetic, and does he fulfill Obadiah's
expectations? Talk about the return of the spyglass as a sign that
Obadiah again has a vision of a brave and exciting life at sea.
Obadiah the Bold can expand your youngster's vocabulary
with exciting words evoking the sea. See if your child under-
stands the significance of Mother's reference to a "friendly
pirate"? Encourage your son or daughter to work towards an
understanding of old nautical vocabulary such as "keelhaul,"
"yardarm," and "Davey Jones." What is happening in the story
when these words are used? Ask your youngster if he would like
to live in Obadiah's world, a strict, orderly world but a world
offering the exciting adventures of the sea to explore.
Ordinary Jack. Helen Cresswell. New York: Macmillan, 1977. (Gr.
3-6). Helen Cresswell has created a wonderful book about an
ordinary boy born into a family of geniuses. Unnerved when his
eight year old sister beats him in swimming laps, Jack, who is
eleven, desperately needs to improve his status in his family.
Under the tutelage of his Uncle Parker, Jack sets out to
become—or at least to appear to become—a Prophet. Your child
will laugh at Jack and Uncle Parker's plots to display Jack's
supernatural powers by having Jack's family witness his visions
and prophecies: Jack's acquired skill in looking just past some-
one's ear to create a Vision, his mysterious prediction of the man
in the purple suit, and his grand finale in which the family gath-
ers to watch the Giant Bubble and the Great Brown Bear.
Have a conversation about the difference between appear-
ance and reality. Ask your child how many of the Bagthorpes
worry as much about appearance as about what they actually
achieve. Talk about how William dramatizes his ham radio
hobby through his anonymous radio informant. Is Rosie's paint-
ing as exceptional as you might at first expect? Discuss the irony
of Uncle Parker working hard on his image as a relaxed man of
leisure. What can you conclude 'when only Jack admits reading
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 255

comics, but Jack's father is discovered reading the whole pile of

comics? What generalizations can you make regarding the fam-
ily's urge to create an image. Although Jack feels that he is differ-
ent because his "genius" is an act, isn't he much like the rest of
his family?
Although Jack shares some qualities with the rest of his fam-
ily, your child will be sure to find the contrasts far more obvious
than the similarities. Talk about Jack's concern for his dog, Zero.
Bring up the family's reading material, and Jack's choices for
birthday presents (remember Uncle Parker's comment), as well
as the way each spends free time.
Early one morning, away from the normal Bagthorpe tur-
moil, Jack meets Grandpa listening to the birds sing in the gar-
den. You might even want to read again the passage on page 143
in which Jack suddenly realizes that he, William, Tess and Rosie
might someday grow as old as Grandpa is now and that they
might wear a hearing aid and wake up at dawn. Consider how
Jack reevaluates the importance of being a genius. How does his
view of being a prophet change? Why does he now feel happier
and more free? Take time to share fully and honestly your own
values on achieving success and on projecting the image of suc-
cess. Let your child appreciate the costs and rewards each of the
Bagthorpes has reaped.
Owls i n th e Family. Farley Mowat. 1962. New York: Bantam, (Gr.
2-6). Before reading Owls in the Family, many people picture
owls as fierce noclurnal hunters, who by day disappear to sleep.
Wol and Weeps, orphaned owls adopted into Billy's family,
quickly alter that image. It's hard to imagine an owl following a
boy to school, hitching a ride on the handlebars of his bicycle.
Wol and Weeps are based on Mowat's memories of owls he had
in his childhood. He teaches about animals here just as in his
well-known book, Never Cry Wolf.
The owls appear full of emotion, Wol feeling amused from his
teasing or pouting when laughed at, Weeps cuddling up to Mutt
for security. Encourage your child to look carefully at the emo-
tions attributed to the owls. Do owls really have such emotions?
Perhaps they do. How does the author describe their emotions?
Does he see them with human-like feelings? What emotions have
you seen in animals? What habit of Wol's tells us that he is care-
ful and gentle with people?
Wol and Weeps, living in a human environment, yield rich
information on the instinctive and learned behaviors of owls.
Help your child distinguish between the habits acquired from
256 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

humans and their instinctive behaviors. Think about the story of

Wol climbing the tree with his beak and claws. What can you
conclude about their learning process? Is flying learned or
instinctive? (You may want to explain what instinctive actions
are.) What conclusions can you draw about the hunting behav-
ior of owls? Why didn't Wol and Weeps become great hunters?
Why did Wol choose to hunt mainly skunks?
Make predictions about Wol and Weeps living in the wild.
Compare the distinct personalities of the timid Weeps and Wol,
the happy tease, to the picture of Wol's mother dive-bombing Mr.
Miller in order to protect her nest. What changes would they
have to make in their behavior to find adequate food? Could a
wild owl have acted as surrogate mother for a newly hatched
flock of prairie chickens? Discuss what would happen if a wild
owl passed up such food. Have your child judge the decision to
keep the birds in human care, remembering that an orphaned
baby owl could not survive on its own.
Philip Hall Likes Me I Reckon Maybe. Bette Greene. New York:
Dell, 1974. (Gr. 3-6). Lively and full of spirit, Beth Lambert is a
gutsy girl, who is the best in the class except for Philip Hall.
Philip not only overshadows her at school, he also allows her to
do his chores after school. But Beth grows steadily in confidence
until in the last chapter she is the best in the class, and she wins
the 4H calf raising contest. Capturing thieves, earning money,
competing fiercely with each other, Beth and Philip tickle the
readers' funny bones and will earn your child's admiration.
Before your young reader begins this book, you might want
to ask about boy-girl relations in your child's own experience
and focus on similar issues in the book. In general, what do boys
and girls in your child's school and neighborhood think of each
other? Do they like each other? Do they play with each other?
Do they compete with each other? Who usually wins? Guess
what the girl pictured on the front of the book is like. Will she
like Philip Hall? Will Philip Hall like her?
Help your son or daughter understand Beth. Discuss what
other characters tell you about Beth and what Beth says about
herself. What can you infer about her from what others tell you?
Recall incidents that indicate that Beth is more competent than
Philip. Especially remember the scene in the dark when Philip
thinks he hears Gorilla Man. Talk about Beth's determination in
the face of adversity. What does she do when Philip's invitation
doesn't arrive, when her allergy acts up with the new puppies,
arid when the cows trample the vegetable stand? What similar!-
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 257

ties do her responses have? What generalization can you make

about her reaction to disappointments? How would you react if
those things happened to you? Which of Beth's qualities would
make her a good veterinarian?
Encourage a prediction of Beth's future based on what your
child knows about her from her childhood exploits. What prob-
lem might make it hard for her to treat animals? How would you
evaluate Beth's abilities? Do you predict that she will be success-
ful at what she does?
Girls can enjoy the vicarious pleasure of Beth's victory in the
calf-raising contest. The contest does become a boy-versus-girl
competition whose end might not please boys. Initiate a conver-
sation on Beth's blue ribbon. Talk about Beth's and Philip's
friendship, how it survived the contest, and the attitudes we
have on male-female competition. Be sure to contrast Beth's
confidence at the end of the book with her confidence at the
beginning. When does Beth start to think she can do as well as
Philip? Trace the growth of Beth's willingness to stand up to
Philip Hall. How does Beth compete when she is more confi-
dent? Evaluate how important winning and losing are in the
book.
Pigs Might Fly. Dick King-Smith. Puffin, 1980. (Gr. 3-7). Pigs Might
Fly is an excellent choice for lighthearted fantasy where laughs
mock self-satisfied prejudice and ignorance. Daggie Dogfoot is a
runt pig (called a dag in the local vernacular) in the tradition of
Wilbur in Charlotte's Web. Through his courage and determina-
tion, along with a little luck and the help of his friends, Daggie
escapes the ignoble death suffered by all previous dags, to
become a hero admired by his fellow pigs. Humor and fresh per-
spectives stimulate the reader to think again with an awakened
mind.
One source of humor is the author's variations on old sayings
that make a young reader aware of how we use cliches. Notice
such playful variations as "I'll be butchered if I know" (instead of
"I'll be hanged if I know") or "on the other trotter" (instead of
"on the other hand"). Point out these expressions to increase
awareness of how we use language. What do these expressions
really mean?
One of those expressions, the "old sow's tale" that pigs can't
swim, is a pivotal element of the story. Ask if Daggie's swimming
ability would have been as impressive if the pigs hadn't always
believed that pigs can't swim. Could Daggie have become a hero
if his ability to swim had not seemed supernatural to the pigs?
258 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Talk about how the pigs reach humorous conclusions because

of their inaccurate preconceptions. Because the pigs "know" the
Pigrnan is their servant, they attribute his bending over at the
Squire's stall to respect for the Squire rather than to the sloping
roof of Squire's stall.
Knowing what the pigs think of the Squire and the Pigman,
we are ready to predict their interpretation of the final scene
when the Pigman kneels to release the rescue straps around
Daggie. Discuss how we find humor in the contrast between the
pigs' belief in the Pigman's homage to Daggie and the real causes
of his kneeling, which the reader knows were the helicopter
blades and the release straps.
The reader can laugh easily at the pigs' faulty reasoning. The
pigs, however, might find their ignorance and clouded thinking
dangerous. What do you know about the Pigman's meals that the
pigs don't know? Compare their ignorance to the despised duck's
awareness of the dangers of the Pigman's menu. Consider how
their contempt for the Pigman and the duck prevents them from
suspecting the truth.
What do you think about the pigs' judgment? Where is the
problem in their thinking when they believe Daggie is pulling the
helicopter home? What evidence do they consider and what evi-
dence do they ignore? How do emotions affect judgment? Could
people make the same mistakes in their thinking that these pigs
do?
Rabbit Spring. Tilde Michels. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1988. (Gr. 2-5). Illustrator Kathi Bhend's drawings
of rabbits and hares in their natural habitat will catch any
youngsters who love soft, furry animals. Rabbit Spring is a
bridge between fiction and nonfiction depicting the contrasting
lives of rabbit and hare families. Rahn, a young father of new
rabbit kittens, enthusiastically builds a nursery for his offspring.
His initial pride in his own family trickles away, however, when
he discovers newborn hares who are far more advanced than his
own blind, deaf, hairless babies. Ask if your child agrees with
mother rabbit Silla that all is as it should be, that hares and rab-
bits simply live differently. To what other areas of life can you
and your child apply this generalization?
Lead your child to compare rabbits and hares. Talk about
how they seem so similar in many ways, more alike, for
instance, than a cocker spaniel and poodle. Yet through Rahn we
see many differences. Talk about how their homes are different.
How does the isolated life of hares contrast with the large family
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 259

of rabbits? Talk about their different methods of grooming

themselves. How does grooming help us draw conclusions about
the hares' isolated life style or the rabbits' community life? Your
child will probably notice himself the different ways rabbits and
hares escape from danger. How do they watch or signal alarm?
How do they escape from predators? How do hares and rabbits
differ in physical appearance? Which do you think is the better
runner? How does their type of home reflect their physical abili-
ties and their means of protection from enemies? What would
happen if hares were like rabbits at birth?
As your child reads about Rahn and his encounter with the
hares, he will have to separate the fiction from the non-fiction in
Rahn's account. Discuss how much a rabbit or hare can commu-
nicate. Can we tell what a rabbit is thinking?
A River Ran Wild. Lynne Cherry. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace, 1992.
(Gr. 2-5). Lynne Cherry has fashioned a beautiful book with lush
illustrations about the Nashua River in Massachusetts in the
hopes that her book "inspires her readers to be people who make
a difference in the world." Pay attention not only to the full-page
illustrations facing the text but also to the border illustrations on
the text pages: Wondrous delights reside there, from animals in
the Nashua River Valley to Indian supplies and handcrafts to
artifacts of the Industrial Revolution, which changed dramati-
cally the lives of the people and the river. Note the maps and
time lines on the inside front and back covers for painless his-
tory and geography lessons about the Nashua River Valley.
Lynne Cherry tells of the river's evolution through time; of the
Native Americans who under Chief Weewa settled in the river
valley and named the waterway "River with the Pebbled Bot-
tom"; of the pale-skinned trader who brought new wares; and of
the settlers who built fences and plowed fields, who built
sawmills and dams, cutting down the towering forests, and who
warned the Indians not to trespass. We see the gradual pollution
of the great Nashua as the Industrial Revolution sweeps through
the country in the name of progress. Soon "The Nashua was
slowly dying." We learn of Oweana, a descendant of the original
Nashua Indians; Oweana dreams that Chief Weewa returned to
weep over the dirty waters and cleansed them. When he told his
dream to his friend Marion, together they resolved to do some-
thing. Marion traveled the river banks speaking to people about
the river's history and getting them to see how beautiful and
clean the river could be. People wrote letters to their governmen
leaders, and ultimately laws were passed to prevent further pol
260 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

lution. "Now we walk along its banks and row upon its fragrant
waters. Once again the river runs wild through a towering green-
way."
A River Ran Wild is a youngsters environmental action book.
One discussion that should grow naturally out of your reading is
whether or not you and your child can influence the environ-
ment in your own community. Talk about the pristine beauty of
the river and the surrounding land that the Indians found and
nurtured and the river and land as Marion began her crusade.
You'll want to discuss the wages of progress with your child.
Talk about predicting outcomes: What might the pale-skinned
settlers have done to prevent the pollution of the river? What
conclusions and generalizations can your child draw from this
book? Consider this one: Peoples actions can make a difference
in causing or reversing the land's decline. Or this: Native Ameri-
cans cared for and respected the land more than Americans
today. Also, consider whether progress is achievable without
bringing harm to the planet: We don't want children to accept as
an absolute that scientific advancement and the earth's well-
being are incompatible.
Scorpions. Walter Dean Myers. New York: HarperCollins, 1988. (Gr.
6+). Jamal Hick's world in Harlem is threatening. He worries
about his mother's safety as she returns home late at night past
the addict below their apartment window. Jamal sees "thrown
away people" in the park, people whose lives are wasted by
drugs and alcohol, who are frightening because they once were
like Jamal—kids living on these streets. When Jamal's older
brother Randy sends word from prison that Jamal is to be leader
of his gang, the Scorpians, Jamal is flung into rivalry with older
kids who want the power and money from drug dealing. Jamal
wants safety. The gang seems to provide safety, and the gun he
receives impresses the bigger kids who threaten to beat him up.
Be sure to discuss the role of the gun with your child. Talk about
Jamal's feelings about the gun. Why does he hesitate to throw it
away? Weigh its effect in the fight when Jamal was saved from
the attacker's knife and its effect in taking away Tito, Jamal's one
close friend and confidant.
Help your child become oriented to the setting of this book by
talking about the cover. From the picture what can you infer
about the boys' attitudes? Are the boys friends? What can you
tell about their surroundings? Notice the condition of the steps
and railing. What does the graffiti on the doors indicate about
the neighborhood?
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 261

After your son or daughter has read the book, talk about how
Jamal's life is different from your child's. Evaluate the impor-
tance of physical violence. What gives kids status in Jamal's
neighborhood? How much entertainment comes from after
school fights? Talk about the role of school in Jamal's life? Does
the school help or hurt him? Review the sequence of Jamal's
run-ins with the principal? What can you conclude about the
principal's goals and values? What do you predict will be Jamal's
future in school? How do you evaluate Jamal's talents and abili-
ties? Does school develop his abilities?
Help your son or daughter evaluate the support Jamal gets
from his family. What can you infer about Jamal's mother's dedi-
cation to her family? Explore the effect Randy has on the family.
Talk about how much Jamal's mother cares about his school
work and how little she actually knows about his life at school.
What do you predict will be the effect of her not knowing about
the pills Jamal is taking? While Jamal finds love in his family, he
finds little guidance from his mother, from Randy in prison, or
from his absentee father. How will Jamal grow to manhood
without guidance in his family? What do you predict for his
future?
You may want to introduce this book when your child has
gained some mEiturity and is ready to evaluate the effects of soci-
ety. Books of this quality that portray Jamal's part of the world
are rare. Scorpions offers our children a valuable window on our
neighbors' lives.
Seminole Diary: Remembrances o f a Slave. Dolores Johnson. New
York: Macmillan, 1994. (Gr. 3-6). This wonderful tale "of people
who risked their lives and homes aiding African-American slaves
in their escape to freedom" has a structure akin to a play within
a play. We meet Gina, a young black girl who comes upon her
mother in the attic examining the contents of an old steamer
trunk. Her mother is reading a marvelous work passed on by
one of her ancestors, a slave named Libbie, who "left a wealth of
precious memories" in her diary.
From Thursday, March 13, 1834 to Monday, June 22, 1835,
Seminole Diary chronicles the story of Libbie's family and their
escape from an abusive slaveholder to South (not North, the
usual escape route). Ultimately they join a tribe of Seminole
Indians. "The Indians will protect y'all," Silas, an escaped slave
declares, "and treat you like brothers even though you'll be their
slaves." Slave catchers avoid slaves of the Indians, Libbie's Papa
explains after speaking with Chief Running Tiger. We see the
262 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

black family join the Indian culture—one Seminole woman

named Honey Flower takes a strong liking to Libbie's sister
Clarissa and the two build a close relationship. When the white
men force the Seminoles off their land onto protected Oklahoma
Territory and when Papa decides to move his family there with
many of the tribesmen, Clarissa vanishes with Honey Flower
into the swamps of South Florida "to live on land that even the
white man could never want."
There are endless conversational possibilities here to enrich
critical reading and thinking. Discuss diaries in general. Why do
people keep them? Why did Libbie keep a diary? (Perhaps you
can start a diary-keeping project with your son or daughter.)
Compare the two lives Libbie had to lead—one as a slave and
one as a sister of the Seminoles. What difficulties does Libbie
encounter? What problems would any person face in leaving a
familiar setting and becoming part of a new culture? What can
your child infer about the Seminoles from this book? What kind
of people were they? Why would they want to help black fami-
lies escaping from slavery? How does your child account for
Clarissas willingness to be completely absorbed by another fam-
ily? Do you think she willingly left with Honey Flower? Why or
why not? Why does Clarissa insist on being called Swift Spar-
row, the name her Seminole "family" gave her, instead of her
own name, which is the name of her dead mother? How does
Libbie feel about the Indian boy, Wild Jumper, who holds her
interest? Libbie says that Seminole boys don't have time for
laughing: "They have to be men," she declares. What does she
mean? What conclusions can your child draw about the
demands of Seminole life?
The story also allows much opportunity for predicting outcomes,
and you can check some of these educated guesses in the library.
What does your son or daughter think is the fate of the Oklahoma-
bound Seminoles? Dolores Johnson takes much pride in her
research for this children's book. In the last two pages Gina's Mom
talks about the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) in the Oklahoma
Territory, where "Seminole and black warriors chose to stay and
fight for their land." These facts flesh out an often neglected
moment in American history. Certainly your youngster will have the
same kinds of questions Gina asks at the end of the book, and
Mom's instructive answers will stimulate further speculation.
The Sign o f the Beaver. Elizabeth George Speare. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1983. (Gr. 4-7). In the Maine wilderness in 1768, twelve-
year-old Matt stays alone to watch over his family's new home-
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 263

stead while his father goes to bring back the rest of the family.
Matt soon has a guest—a hungry vagrant who steals the hunting
rifle. Talk with your child about how you can infer that Ben, the
visitor, is not to be trusted. You and your child might also dis-
cuss your judgment of Ben who must have known that Matt was
depending on the rifle to get food during his father's absence.
Matt, however, soon realizes that he can catch fish for food.
What can your child conclude about Mart's resourcefulness?
Contrast Ben with Matt's second visitors, the Indians Saknis
and Akkean, who rescue Matt from an attack of swarming bees
and who continue to befriend him, bringing him gifts and teach-
ing him Indian hunting skills. What generalizations can you
make about each visitor? Who is kind and honest? Who is
untruthful?
Woven into Matt's story is the tale of Robinson Crusoe, which
you may want to retell for your child although the author has
included the bare plot. The similarities and differences between
Matt and Robinson Crusoe offer a wealth of comparison-con-
trast questions. In each book who gave help and who received
help? Which situation is more realistic: Crusoe's being ship-
wrecked with his store of tools and a worshipping native, or
Matt's precarious existence in the woods without tools of any
sort but with Indian teachers? Noting the sequence of events,
discuss Matt's growing awareness of how Robinson Crusoe's fate
should have been more like Matt's own with Friday being the
teacher in his own land.
Another important comparison is the growth into manhood
for both Matt and Akkean. Talk about the meaning of the word
"manitou" that your child has learned from reading about
Akkean's passage into manhood. When Matt sees Akkean after
he has received his manitou, what does Matt infer about
Akkean? How has Akkean changed? Matt's movement toward
adulthood is more subtle, but careful questioning on your part
can make Matt's maturity apparent for your child. Discuss how
Matt's parents talked about Matt's achievements on the home-
stead. Matt's father especially speaks of Matt's doing a man's job.
Finally, Matt earned the respect of his Indian friends when he
least expected it—when he decided to wait for his family. With
your child explore the values that led Saknis and Akkean to
judge Matt worthy of respect. Together evaluate what Matt
learned from his experience. Talk about his woodsmanship, his
appreciation of another culture, his self-reliance, his courage,
and his unusual friendship.
264 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Spectacular Stone Soup. Patricia Reilly Giff. New York: Dell, 1989.
(Gr. 1-3). Spectacular Stone Soup offers beginning readers famil-
iar scenes and characters that evoke emotions felt by nearly all
early elementary children—a desire to please and to be grown
up but also a feeling of uncertainty in the new world of the
school. The setting is a class unit on helping, which includes a
shared stone soup party. Children can identify with normally
enthusiastic Stacy who becomes temporarily discouraged trying
to fulfill her teachers image of a good helper.
Talk about the picture you see on the cover when your child is
ready to begin this book. What are the children doing? Who do
you think the adult is with the spoon? A mother? A teacher?
What might be in the big pot? Does the title give you a clue? Can
you infer how the children feel by looking at the expressions on
their faces? Would you like to be with those children?
Capitalize on an opportunity to relate reading to your child's
own experience. Ask whether your son or daughter has ever felt
like Stacy. What attempt to help has led to trouble instead? Talk
about the fun and feeling of importance that come with partici-
pating in a big project.
Show your child how much he can infer about Stacy without
being specifically told. Think about how Stacy talks in class.
Softly? Boldly? Is she afraid to talk in class, or does she want to
speak out? Is Stacy afraid to tell kids what to do in the hall?
Would you conclude that Stacy is shy or outgoing? What clues
indicate that Stacy likes her teacher, Mrs. Zachary? How old
would you guess Stacy is? Are other kids in the school older or
younger than Stacy? (For Example, what kids take a snack
rather than a lunch?) Can she read the words on the board?
How much does Stacy know about hall monitors? Discuss how
much your child knows about Stacy's mother who never appears
in the story. How is her mother ready to help her? Do you think
she talks much with her mother? Find examples of Stacy's
repeating her mother's opinions.
A delightful extra in the book is a map of Stacy's classroom.
You will want to use it to develop the important skill of map
reading. Talk about how Stacy's class is arranged. Compare
Stacy's classroom to rooms in your child's school. While reading
the story, your child can practice map use by pointing out where
the kids are in the classroom.
The Story o f Helen Keller. Lorena A. Hickok. New York: Scholastic,
1958. (Gr. 4-7). When Helen's father, in the first chapter, contem-
plates placing six year old Helen in an institution, be prepared
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 265

for intense reactions from your child. What conclusion can she
draw about Helen's father from his plan? What can she infer
about Helen herself? Yet the bleakness of those early years for
Helen and her family sets off the achievements that follow. Dis-
cuss how the tremendous handicaps Helen faced make possible
the great triumph of her life. If Helen had had normal ears and
eyes, would she have become famous? Talk with your child
about any generalizations you might derive regarding achieve-
ment in the face of great obstacles.
The young Helen is frequently compared to a puppy. She eats
like a dog, begging handouts at the table, making a sound like a
little growl. Then Helen learns language. Compare Helen's per-
sonality before and after she learned words. What can you con-
clude about the effect language had on Helen? What can Helen
do once she has words for things?
Could Helen have escaped from her prison of blindness and
deafness without help? Have your child explore Teacher's influ-
ence. Ask why Helen wanted to write a book about Teacher.
Explore the differences and similarities between Helen and
Teacher. Consider how Teacher's blindness prepared her to help
Helen. What advantages did Helen have that Teacher lacked?
Talk about the determination and enthusiasm each posessed.
Helen was more fortunate than Teacher in one way: Helen
had a family that loved her. Does it seem strange then that
Helen's father considered putting her in an institution? (Remem-
ber that institutions in those days were very depressing places.)
Did Helen's father love her? What incidents were difficult for
him to witness? Did he have much hope that Helen could learn?
What happened when Helen started to talk, or sign, with her fin-
gers? What did Helen's parents do to help her? When did they
make learning more difficult for her? Lead your child to judge
the effect Helens parents had on her learning.
Contrast Helen's education to the schooling most of us
receive. Discuss Teacher's blending of play and learning. How
did Helen feel about learning? How much of her learning
seemed like a game? Talk about how Helen gained freedom and
an entry into a bigger world through her education and how it
was fun—at least until the last years of college. Compare her
education with our usual feeling that school is more like a
prison than a new found freedom. How did Teacher and Helen
keep her education from becoming dreary and limiting? Are
there ways we might envy Helen?
Tuck Everlasting. Natalie Babbit. New York: Farrar, Straus &
266 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

Giroux, 1975. (Gr. 3+). The story starts during the dog days of
August, the high point of the year, the static moment that the
preceding weeks have been leading to. The following weeks will
drop off toward autumn chills. This picture of time frames Win-
nie Foster's meeting with timelessness, with the possibility of
ternal life. Winnie discovers a mysterious spring and the family
ho once drank its waters eighty-seven years ago. No aging or
death threatens their immortality or their youth. From seven-
teen-year-old Jesse Tuck (or is he 102?) and from his brother and
parents, Winnie learns about life lived forever—at one age, with-
out peaks and valleys, without high points and without bonds to
other people, for how could they live with those who grow old?
A mysterious stranger has also learned of the peculiar spring.
Unlike the Tuck family, who consider the spring a heavy burden
holding potential chaos for the world, the stranger plans to pub-
licize the spring and make a fortune from its waters. Why do the
Tucks feel the way they do about the spring? Compare the Tucks'
life with normal lives and compare their understanding with the
stranger's greedy thoughtlessness. Ask your child what the Tucks
have learned that the stranger does not consider. Talk about
Tuck's words to Winnie in the boat. How is life like the water
flowing by the boat? How are the Tucks, who will never die, not
really living? How do they exist like a rock?
Ask your child what it would be like to be a child forever? If
you were to choose an age to be forever, what age would you be?
What problems might you face?
How would your child judge Mae's killing of the stranger?
Was she right or wrong? Did she have any other alternatives?
Predict what might have happened to the world if the stranger
had announced the existence of the spring.
Finally discuss Winnie's decision. Did she make the right
decision? When you read the gravestone, do you think Winnie
had a full life? Speculate on why she didn't stay with Jesse. Do
you think she worried about Jesse's eternal loneliness? Evaluate
her choice. Why do you think she chose an ordinary life with its
inevitable old age and death? What generalizations can you
draw about humans and old age?
Upon th e Head of th e Goat; A Childhood i n Hungary, 1939-1944.
Aranka Siegel. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981. (Gr. 5+).
The reader first meets Piri in the Ukraine where war between
Hungary and the Ukraine has stranded her on her grandmother's
farm. Through the winter Piri lives quietly, but the war some-
times reaches even their remote village. And when the end of
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 267

this war allows Piri to return to her own home in Budapest, it is

only a respite before the much greater war that will soon
envelop them. Piri's autobiographical story resurrects the war
years, the hardships, fears, hopes, and daily life of Hungarian
Jews.
Do a prereading discussion to help your child benefit from
this book. To understand Piri's situation your child may need an
explanation of the countries and ethnic groups around Hungary.
Also, read together the quote from Leviticus and retell the
ancient story of the scapegoat. Discuss why the author referred
to the goat in the title?
Because we know the history of World War II, the threat of
death lurks throughout the story. Piri's family confronts those
fears, but are not overwhelmed by them. Talk about examples
from the book showing their ingenuity at finding food. Would
you conclude that they are optimistic? Only the first chapter
evokes the spectre of death when Piri watches the bodies of
Ukrainian soldiers floating down the Rika River. Have your son
or daughter reflect on Babi's response that the soldiers are at
peace. Talk about Babi's sense of peace. Does it influence the rest
of the family?
With your child evaluate the importance of hope for Piri's
family. Do you agree that hope could be their salvation? What
allows Piri and Judi to enjoy the boys in the ghetto? To what
extent do you think they are like kids their age in normal cir-
cumstances?
When Piri and her family are taken to the ghetto, Mother's
resourcefulness and determination contrast to the despair of the
other families. Ask your child how Mother showed the same
resourcefulness and determination earlier in the war when living
conditions became difficult? Discuss Mother's willingness to
help strangers as well as her own family. How is Piri like
Mother? What incident shows Piri helping strangers?
Talk about the relations between Jews and non-Jews in the
book. What does Mother say about her friends in the city? What
do you infer about the difference in social contacts in the city
and in the country? Compare Mother's and Babi's attitudes
toward non-Jews. How does Mother interpret the silence of her
friends when trouble comes? What reasons might Mother's
friends have for being distant?
As time runs out in the ghetto some try to organize a rebel-
lion. Help your child judge the consequences of a rebellion.
What do you predict the Germans would have done? What emo-
268 ANY CHILD CAN READ BETTER

tions did the planning for the rebellion raise in the rebels? Did
the rebels feel more worthwhile? Did they feel more human by
not submitting? Would the rebellion have been worth the cost?
The Upstairs Room. Johanna Reiss. New York: HarperCollins, 1972.
(Gr. 5+). The radio makes Annie lonely. Her father no longer
holds her and talks to her; he listens to news about Hitler's Ger-
many, which is just a few miles away from their home in Hol-
land. The day German soldiers parade through the town square,
life becomes more difficult for Annies Jewish family. Unable to
get immigration papers, the family goes into hiding. For the rest
of the war Annie and her older sister Sini live in a Dutch farm
family's upstairs room.
Together with your child try to evaluate what Annie's family
lost in addition to their freedom. What can you infer about
importance of lost family ties? How had the sisters grown apart
when Rachel visited Annie and Sini? What can you generalize
about how a family should face a mother's death? What extra
loss did their mother suffer dying without her family near? Talk
about Annie and Sini's hesitation to leave the Oostervelds' to
rejoin their father. What was lost between father and daughters?
What material goods did they lose? What can you predict about
their financial situation when they return home?
To understand better the difficulty of life lived in the upstairs
room, compare Annie's life there to other forms of imprison-
ment. Brainstorm with your child about ways freedom can be
lost: prison, illness, slavery, and so on. Then discuss what global
reactions each type of prison would evoke such as anger, guilt,
blame, boredom, fear, frustration, and so forth. Which of these
reactions is found in Annie's story?
The Oostervelds call themselves plain people. Using factual
descriptive details of life in their house, your child can establish
what a rugged lifestyle they had. Have your child contrast the
Oostervelds' household with Annie's and contrast the educa-
tional levels of the families. How great is the difference? Would
you expect Annie and Sini to feel at home there? Discuss why
such affection grew among them.
Is Johan a dumb farmer as he frequently describes himself?
Draw evidence from incidents in the text and from comments in
the story about Johan's intelligence. What does Dientje say about
him? How does he outsmart the Germans? Is there a sense that
Johan enjoys matching wits with the Germans? Despite the
many horrors of the war, The Upstairs Room is not a pessimistic
book. Talk about the bond between the sisters and the Ooster-
 MOMS AND DADS AS READING HELPERS 269

velds. What makes you like and respect the sisters and the Oost-
ervelds, ordinary as they all are? Is this a valid generalization to
draw from this book: "The kindness of some people can redeem
the cruelty of others"? Does your child's experience bear out the
truth of this generalization?
The Whipping Boy. Sid Fleischman. Greenwillow, 1986. (Gr. 2-6)
Adult readers and children will immediately recognize the poor
little rich boy theme in The Whipping Boy. Bored and spoiled
Prince Horace, or Prince Brat as he is surreptitiously called,
takes his whipping boy out for a lark outside the palace walls.
Whipping boy Jemmy, whose job is to receive Prince Brat's
whippings, unhappily obeys the command to go. Their adven-
ture brings Prince Brat his first taste of the real world, his first
experience of friendship, and his first appreciation for the conse-
quences of his own actions.
Your child will want to talk about the changes in Prince Brat.
She will probably bring up Prince Brat's new ability to use his
brain and his new concern for people besides himself. You can
help distinguish less obvious changes such as Prince Brat's new
sense of humor. What makes him laugh in the beginning, and
what causes him to smile in the final scene with his father? Con-
trast the way he identifies himself to Billy and Cutwater with the
way he introduces himself at the fair. Help your child appreciate
the gradual development of Prince Brat's character as well as a
sense of the sequence of the story by noting pertinent details
along the way. Talk about what Prince Brat has actually learned
from watching his whippings given to Jemmy. What have the
consequences of his actions been? What conclusions can you
draw about the prince's education?
In addition, lead your child to infer the prince's real motives
for getting into trouble. What does the prince say about his
father? Look at what the king has learned when his son returns.
Discuss whether the new understanding between the prince and
his father will lead to better behavior from the prince in the
future.
Help your son or daughter evaluate who has been the "advan-
taged" child in the story. Bring her to an appreciation of the two
measures in the story, one for outward material advantages and
the other for inner moral and intellectual advantages. How do
the boys begin at opposite poles and both become more advan-
taged in the end?
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 Index

Adler, Mortimer J., 130 Cause and effect

Advertisements characteristics of paragraphs, 105,
connecting visual/verbal elements, 106
119-120 and predicting outcomes, 168-169
predicting outcome from, 172-173 Charts. See Graphs/charts/tables
word skills from, 48 Cherry, Lynne, 259
Age, and teaching reading, 6 Children of Green Knowe, The
All-picture, no-word books, 14-15 (Boston), 231
Alphabet skills, 4 Chronological information, 101, 102
Amazing Bone, The (Steig), 227 Classification
Amos Fortune, Free Man (Yates), 228 and generalizing, 201-207
Any Child Can Write, 4 home objects for, 204-205
Appendix, previewing of, 62-63 Sense Chart for, 207
Clements, Barthe de, 240
Babbit, Natalie, 265 Cohen, Barbara, 230
Bar graphs, 122-123, 126 Come Sing, Jimmy Jo (Paterson),
Bibliography, previewing of, 63 232
Book parts Comparison and contrast, character-
appendix, 62-63 istics of paragraphs, 105
bibliography, 63 Comparisons
glossary, 62 figurative language for, 51-52, 55,
index, 62 56
introduction, 63 in graphs, 123-124
preface, 62 Compound words, and word mean-
table of contents, 61 ing, 37-38
Books Comprehension, literal comprehen-
all-picture books, 14—15 sion, 79
early experiences with, 14-15 Computers, impact of, 221
marking up books, 130-136 Conclusions. See Drawing conclu-
personal relationship with, sions
130-131 Conflict, in writing, 159
previewing of, 61—64 Connotative meanings, 44—48
reading journal, 136-141 helping child with, 47-48
Boston, Lucy M., 231 nature of, 44
Brainstorming, for prereading, 73 Context clues, 20-30
Branley, Franklyn M., 237 examples of, 24-25
Buffalo Hunt (Freedman), 229 and multiple meanings, 21-23
sentence hints, 28-30
Captions, of visual aids, 117—118 Conversation, and language learn-
Carp in the Bathtub (Cohen), 230 ing, 13-14
Cartoons Country Fair (Gibbons), 234
inference from, 152 Cresswell, Helen, 254
predicting outcome from, 172—174 Crow Boy (Yashima), 235

271
272 INDEX

Cry of the Crow, The (George), 236 helping child with, 53—58
meaning of, 49
Dahl, Roald, 251 metaphor, 52, 55
Decoding, 8 personification, 52-53
Denotative meanings, 44—48 simile, 51-52, 56
helping child with, 47-48 in writing, 50—53
nature of, 44 First sentence of selection, preview-
and writing, 45-47 ing of, 64
Description, and figurative language, Five Finger Discount (Clements), 240
49-50 Five W's, in locating/remembering
Details, 99-101 facts, 96
in factual information, 97-101 Flash cards, 4
listing in paragraphs, 105 Fleischman, Paul, 247
and main idea, 99 Fleischman, Sid, 269
major and minor, 99 Flesch, Rudolph, 18
Dictionary, misuse of, 11-13 Freedman, Russell, 229
Display, special displays in text, 70 Freewriting, for prereading, 73-75
Dolphin Goes to School, A (Smith), Friendship, The (Taylor), 242
226
Doubt words, in opinions, 110 Generalizing, 194-217
Drawing conclusions, 179-188 and classification, 201-207
in everyday life, 180-182 and drawing conclusions, 196, 197,
and generalizing, 196, 197, 198-200
198-200 guidelines for, 215
guidelines for, 186-188 home practice with, 201-207
questioning method for, 181, and inference, 196
183-185 meaning of, 195
from visual images, 182 other skills related to, 196-197
Drawings. See Illustrations; Visual from reading, 208-215
Aids sweeping generalization, 215
George, Jean Craighead, 236
Eclipse; Darkness in Daytime (Bran- Gibbons, Gail, 234
ley), 237 Giff, Patricia Reilly, 264
Educated guesses, about word mean- Glossary, previewing of, 62
ings, 38-42 Goals for reading, previewing of, 64
Elkind, David, 6, 17 Goodman, Kenneth, 19, 21
Epstein, Joyce, 3 Goodman, Yetta, 21
Everyone Knows What a Dragon Gorman, James, 250
Looks Like (Williams), 238 Grammar, correct versus imperfect,
74
Factual information, 95-99, 106-110 Grandfather's Journey (Say), 243
determination in writing, 107-110 Graphs/charts/tables, 122-129
from, graphs/charts/tables, 122-129 bar graphs, 122-123, 126
gathering facts from piece of writ- charts, information in, 127—128
ing, 97-101 formulating meaning from,
locating/remembering facts, 96 124-129
versus opinion, 108—110 previewing of, 64
and summarizing, 95-97 tables, information in, 128—129
Ferret in the Bedroom, Lizards in the Great School Lunch Rebellion
Fridge (Wallace), 239 (Greenberg), 244
Figurative language, 49-58 Greenberg, David, 244
everyday use of, 49—50 Greene, Bette, 256
 INDEX 273

Hickok, Lorena A., 264 Journal. See Reading journal

Highlights for Children, 153-155 Joyful Noise (Fleischman), 247
Home reading Judgment words, in opinions, 110
advantages of, 4 Jumanji (Allsburg), 247
basis of program, 19-20
parent as teacher, 5 Key words, previewing of, 65
and reading scores, 3-4 King-Smith, Dick, 257
recommended books (grades 1-6),
224-269 Language learning
Hooked on Phonics, 15-17, 19 early experiences, 13-14
Horner, John R., 250 and visual aids, 116
How to Eat Fried Worms (Rockwell), Last One Home is a Green Pig
245 (Kurd), 249
Kurd, Edith Thatcher, 249 Levine, Art, 18
Listing of details, recognizing details,
Ideas, listing for prereading, 72-73 105
Illustrations Listing of ideas, prereading activity,
of all-picture, no-word books, 72-73
14-15 Literal comprehension, meaning of,
captions in, 117-118 79
connecting visual/verbal elements, Living Earth, The (Schmid), 249
119-122 Lord, Betty Bao, 246
drawing conclusions from, 182
inference from, 150-155 Maia; A Dinosaur Grows Up (Horner
main idea from, 86 and Gorman), 250
predicting outcome from, 170—172 Main idea, 80-94
previewing of, 64 and details, 99
See also Visual aids and generalization, 215
Importance, order of, 101, 103 implied, 89-94
Index, previewing of, 62 in paragraph, 86-94
Inference, 134 of pictures/illustrations, 86
and generalizing, 196 in sentences, 82-84
importance of, 145-148 stating in own words, 91
meaning of, 145 and title of selection, 64
in print only, 157-166 Major details, 99
questioning method, 152, 153-155, Marking up books, 130-136
156, 158,165-166 for factual text, 132-135
in real-life scenes, 149, 151 method for, 135-136
in visual images, 150—155 Martin, John Henry, 141-142
in visual-verbal material, 155-157 Matilda (Rahl), 251
Informational reading Metaphor, 52, 55
details, 99-101 Michels, Tilde, 258
fact or opinion, 106-110 Minor details, 99
factual information, 95-99 Miscue analysis, 23—24
main idea, 80-94 Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk
sequence, 101-106 (Elkind), 6
Introduction of book, previewing of, Moffett, James, 201
63 Mowat, Farley, 255
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Myers, Walter Dean, 260
Robinson (Lord), 246
Nate the Great and the Sticky Case
Johnson, Dolores, 261 (Sharmat), 252
274 INDEX

National Assessment of Educational Pigs Might Fly (King-Smith), 257

Progress (NAEP), 146 Poetry, denotation/connotation in,
Newspapers, graphs/charts to pre- 45-46
sent data in, 123-124 Polanyi, Michael, 147-148
Predicting outcome, 168-179
discussions with child about,
Obadiah the Bold (Turkle), 253 169-170, 171-172
Objectives for reading, previewing of, in everyday life, 168-169
64 guidelines for, 186-188
Opinions with print-material, 174—179
determination in writing, 108-110 with visual images, 170-172
meaning of, 108 with visual-verbal material,
word cues to, 110 172-174
Opinion words, 110 Preface, previewing of, 62
Order of importance, arrangement Prefixes, 32-35
by, 101, 103 that mean one, 35
Ordinary Jack (Cresswell), 254 that say no, 34
Outcome. See Predicting outcome that show placement, 34-35
Owls in the Family (Mowat), 255 that tell time, 35
Prereading, 71-77
activities for, 72-77
Paragraph arrangement, 101-106 meaning of, 71
chronological information, 101, value of, 71-72
102 Previewing, 60—71
clues to recognition of, 104-106 books, 61-64
by order of importance, 101, 103 importance of, 70-71
spatial arrangement, 101, 102-103 meaning of, 61
Paragraphs reading selections, 64-70
for cause and effect, 105, 106
for comparison and contrast, 105 Questions about piece
definition of, 86 location of, 70
first, previewing of, 64-65 previewing of, 65
listing of details in, 105 during reading, 96
main idea of, 86-94
Parallel-talk, 13 Rabbit Spring (Michels), 258
Parents, in role of teacher, 5,
222-223 Reading
Paterson, Katherine, 232 activities/processes in, 78-80
Personification, 52-53 impairment of students in, 220
Philip Hall Likes Me I Reckon Maybe interconnection with writing,
(Greene), 256 130-143
Phonetic approach, 15-17 personal meaning through,
limitations of, 17, 19 137-138
Photographs. See Illustrations; and reading journal, 136-141
Visual aids visual aids in, 111-129
Picture books, all-picture, cloth warm-up for, 60-77
books, 14—15 Reading approaches
Pictures phonetic approach, 15-17
drawing conclusions from, 182 whole language approach, 17-19
inference from, 150-155 Reading journal, 136-141
predicting outcome from, 170—172 activity for, 138, 139-140
previewing of, 64 questions addressed in, 138-139
See also Visual aids usefulness of, 137
 INDEX 275

Reading scores, and home reading, Summary, previewing of, 65

3-4 Supermarket, reading experiences
Reading skills in, 14
drawing conclusions, 179-188 Symbols, signs as visual information,
generalizing, 194-217 115
inference, 144-166
predicting outcome, 168-179 Table of contents, previewing of, 61
reading for information, 78—110 Tables. See Graphs/charts/tables
Reiss, Johanna, 268 Tacit knowing, 148
Remembering, of facts, 96 Talk with Your Child, 4
Representational forms, meaning of, Taylor, Mildred, 242
112 Television, inference from programs,
River Ran Wild, A (Cherry), 259 149
Rockwell, Thomas, 245 Title
Roots. See Word roots of book, previewing of, 64
of visual aids, 117-118
Say, Allen, 243 Tuck Everlasting (Babbit), 265
Schmid, Eleonore, 249 Turkle, Brinton, 253
Science Experiments to Amuse and
Amaze Your Friends (Walpole), Upon the Head of the Goat; A Child-
225 hood in Hungary (Siegel), 266
Scorpions (Myers), 260 Upstairs Room, The (Reiss), 268
Self-talk, 13
Seminole Diary: Remembrances of a Van Allsburg, Chris, 247
Slave (Johnson), 261 Visual aids, 111-129
Sense Chart, 207 graphs/charts/tables, 122-129
Sentences importance of, 112-113,116-117
first, in previewing, 64 interrelationship with language,
main idea in, 82-84 114-117, 118-122
Sequence. See Paragraph arrange- reading strategies for, 117-118
ment reasons for use, 114
Sharmat, Marjorie Weinman, 252 Vocabulary
Siegel.Aranka, 266 location of, 70
Sign of the Beaver, The (Speare), 262 previewing of, 65, 66
Signs, as visual information, 115
Simile, 51-52, 56 Wallace, Bill, 239
Smith, Elizabeth Simpson, 226 Walpole, Brenda, 225
Smith, Karen, 20 Warm-up for reading
Spatial arrangement, 101,102-103 prereading, 71-77
Speare, Elizabeth George, 262 previewing, 60—71
Spectacular Stone Soup (Giff), 264 Warner, Jill Marie, 42
Spelling, correct versus imperfect, 74 Whipping Boy, The (Fleishman), 269
Steig, William, 227 Whole language approach, 17-19
Story of Helen Keller, The (Hickok), pros and cons of, 18—19
264 Why Johnny Can't Read (Flesch), 18
Williams, Jay, 238
Subtitles Word map
levels of, 65 example of, 76
previewing of, 64 for prereading, 75-77
Suffixes, 33, 35-36 Word meanings
to signal meanings, 35—36 connotative meanings, 44-48
Summarizing, of factual information, from context clues, 20-30
95-97 denotative meanings, 44-48
276 INDEX

Word Meanings continued for senses, 36

and dictionary use, 11-13 Words
and early language experiences, multiple meanings and context,
13-15 21-23
from educated guesses, 38—42 in opinions, 110
and figurative language, 49-58 Writing
multiple meanings, 21-23 and denotative/connotative word
parallel-talk, 13 meanings, 45-47
picture books, 14-15 figurative language in, 50-53
self-talk, 13 interconnection with reading,
word part clues, 31-38 130-143
Word part clues, 31-38 Writing to Read program, 141-142
compound words, 37—38
prefixes, 32-35 Yashima, Taro, 235
suffixes, 33, 35-36 Yates, Elizabeth, 228
word roots, 33, 36-37
Word roots, 33, 36-37
for action, 36