Ten Great Family-Read Alouds For Quarantine 2020
If you have elementary aged kids home for much longer than you expected this year and you’re casting about for ways to keep them entertained that a) aren’t with a screen and b) can be indoors during the rainy days of spring, I cannot praise reading aloud highly enough. Family read alouds nourish everyone in the family and are one of the best ways to build a read of loving in your children too (science says so!).
(historian me has to say: neither social distancing nor quarantine seems like quite the right phrase for right now, do they? Also, I cheated, because there are technically more than ten titles on this list)
Here are ten of my family’s favorite read-alouds, in no particular order:
1) The Door in the Wall by Marguerite De Angeli ~ Wonderful story about a boy in medieval England. He is left disabled because of illness and the plague plays a background role in the story, so this might be a good discussion point for children learning about and how diseases have affected other people in history. Initially full of anger about this change to his body (understandable!), he gradually learns peace and how he still has important work to do. This one is fairly short, but profound and beautiful.
2) Milo & The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster ~ Milo is bored, bored, boooooreeedddd and doesn’t see the point of much of anything. Then suddenly he’s whisked away on an adventure (accompanied by a faithful Watch Dog, complete with ticking clock) to rescue the princesses Rhyme & Reason from the Castle in the Air. Their brothers, the Mathemagician and Azaz (king of letters) banished them there after a fight and nothing has been quite right in the kingdoms of wisdom ever since. Can Milo save the day?
3) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett ~ This is so beautiful for reading at the cusp of Spring ~ Mary Lennox, a bored and unhappy orphan, finds a hidden garden that’s been locked up for ten years. A boy who loves animals helps her tend the garden, and she learns so much more than just how to weed in the meantime. Yes, I know there are movies from this book. It’s still much better than any of the versions. ;) (Written in the 1800s with some British Imperial references. Just parental heads up there).
4) The Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace ~ Utterly delightful series about two best friends who lived in late 1800s/early 1900s Minnesota. This is a perfect series for little girls.
5) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien ~ Yes, really. This book is SO perfect as a family read-aloud! Don’t feel like you have to read a whole chapter every single night if the language is a bit complex for your children; you can just do 2-3 pages at a time. My children have listened to their daddy read this once (twice?) and an audio version of the book more than once too. Dragons, treasure hunting, funny hobbits… what could be better?
6) The Green Ember series by S. D. Smith ~ My husband is the one who did these; I haven’t read them yet… but when I asked my kids for their favorite read alouds, this was one immediately mentioned. Adventures and rabbits and epic-ness all at once is what I gather from listening to my children discuss them…
7) The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder ~ Start at the beginning and just work your way through them, loving the honest portrayals Laura gives of all the people in her life. Also, check out this wonderful YouTube channel with some of the Little House songs available for you to listen to!
There have been some discussions about her representation of American Indians and racist comments in these books. Here’s my very brief take: are there racist comments made in the books? Yes. Are they extolled or praised? No. Is Laura the one who makes them? No. She reports the world around her, which makes for AMAZING discussion opportunities with your children! One of the people who makes absolutely atrocious statements is also portrayed as being very silly and ignorant for insisting that the Ingalls family got sick from eating a watermelon. When we read these, we stopped to discuss decisions made by several characters: even Pa, a sympathetic character, definitely made the wrong choice settling his family on what he knew was supposed to be Indian land and Laura doesn’t conceal this. (grownups: I recommend reading “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”).
8) Practically anything by Elizabeth Enright ~ She wrote “The Saturdays,” “Then There Were Five,” “The Four Story Mistake,” “The Melendy Maze,” “Goneaway Lake,” “Return to Goneaway Lake,” “Thimble Summer…” ~ and they are ALL worth reading. She writes with a lyrical, humorous, realistic tone that makes every listener yearn to be best friends with her characters. I don’t even know how many times I read and re-read her novels growing up…. There’s a beautiful review on NPR on one of the books…
9) Also Almost Anything by E. Nesbit ~ The Enchanted Castle is a gorgeously fun twist on fairy tales… the magic in her books very rarely works quite the way children expect, but it still leads to riotous fun and, in this book, a sweet ending. If you want to read her without reading fantasy, “The Railway Children” is lovely. It might make you cry (in a happy way) at the end.
10) The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White ~ White is famous for Stuart Little & Charlotte’s Web, but THIS is my favorite of his titles! Louis the trumpeter swan has no voice; how can he function as a trumpeter swan when he’s mute? This is a story of resilience and grace, but with humor and quirkiness along for the ride too.