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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 800: Read to Your Kids As Long As They Will Let You | Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Enchanted Hour
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- [00:01]
A
Summer gets busy fast. One minute you're easing into warmer weather, and the next, you're juggling sports schedules, swim days, camping trips, road trips, late nights around the fire, and trying to keep the house from completely falling apart in the middle of all of it. And if you're a cat family, too, there's still the everyday stuff waiting for you at home, including the litter box. That's why Whiskers Litter Robot is such a game changer. During busy seasons, it automatically cycles after every use, so you're not constantly scooping or dealing with litter cleanup every single day. It just handles the dirty work for you. And the Whisker app notifies you about your unit, like when a clean cycle is complete, when drawer levels are getting full, or if the unit needs attention. You can always track things like your cat's weight and bathroom usage over time, which makes it easy to stay aware of changes without having to constantly check in. Honestly, during a packed summer, having one last daily chore to think about makes a huge difference. Maintain your cat's litter while focusing on your growing family. Learn more about Whisker litter robot models and starter kits today to get set up before the summer craziness arrives. Take an additional $50 off bundles with code 1000 when you shop whisker.com 1000hours that's an additional $50 off bundles with Code 1000hours@whisker.com 1000hours welcome to the 1000hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Urge. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And you are in for a treat today because for so many people, this is such a transformative favorite book of theirs. It is called the Enchanted Hour, the Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction. And wouldn't you know, the author, Megan Cox Gurden is here. Megan, I'm just so thrilled you're here. Thanks for saying yes.
- [01:37]
B
Okay. I kind of want to yell at you, like, thank you, Luma.
- [01:41]
A
I mean, this is what a book. What a book, Megan, to, like, give people the permission to slow down, but also to, like, guide them through and to say, this is one of the best things that you could ever do. You could ever do, and for so many reasons. So I would love if you give us a little bit of your backstory. You know, you grow. I really actually, if you wouldn't mind starting at the party. You talk about this party that you are at. This is before you have kids and you're at this party and the.
- [02:10]
B
The.
- [02:10]
A
What do they call the person, the host that you know the, the wife, all of a sudden she's gone, and you're like, where is she? Could you tell us that story? That kind of. Yeah, absolutely.
- [02:20]
B
I mean, this was, this was my little, like, my, my, my awakening moment. I was not. I, I, I think we were engaged, but not married at this point, certainly didn't have any children. And, and my husband and I went to this party hosted by an old friend of mine who had started having babies early, and she had kind of scandalized everyone because she got married early and had babies early. Like, what's she doing? And there we are, we're all standing around with our drinks, chat, chat, chat. And suddenly, you know how there's always a, there's a kind of sequence, like, you, you have a drink, you chat, the energy is up, and then it's like, time to go through for dinner. But the call to go through for dinner didn't come. And we realized that my friend was not in the room anymore. She'd been actually gone a while. And, and so we said to her husband, Kirk, where's Lisa? And he said, oh, she's just reading to the boys. And he just. It was just like this radicalizing moment because there were several things it told me, but the most important was that this is a non. It's a thing that is so important in family life that it's just the thing you do first. It's the highest priority in family life was to read to the boys. So you had a house full of guests, say, they can handle themselves, they can have a second drink, whatever. But the principal thing that she was doing was reading to her boys. And at that moment, I felt this, like, deep conviction. I thought, boy, if I ever have children, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put reading aloud first. And lo and behold, I did have children, just as many as you do, which I'm really happy about. And I read like, like a fanatic to all of them every night. And, you know, often, honestly, it was for an hour. Sometimes it was longer, sometimes it was less. I mean, I'm not perfect. It didn't quite. Was it always enchanted? Sometimes it was a little chaotic, but, you know, it just was the thing. It was like the through line that carried me through before I had children through. It almost taught me how to be with children, reading to them, because you could see them respond to things. It just put you in tune with them, you know, to read to them when they were. I mean, I started with my first one when I brought her Home from the hospital. It was the first thing I did. I was. I write about this in the book, you might remember. It was a kind of humiliating moment in a way. I. I brought her home. And you. We all have that feeling with the first child. Like, oh my goodness, I'm really responsible for this other person. And your software is being rewritten and all your feelings are confused. And I didn't know what to do, except I knew to read to this child. So I sat down in a rocking chair and I opened up Grimm's Fairy Tales and I began reading to my newborn. And I thought, what am I doing? She can't even understand any of this. She doesn't speak English yet, you know. And I cried. My husband was very sweet about it anyway, but it was. It was like a. It was a way that. So it was the fulfillment of that moment at that party where I thought, if I ever have children, I will read to them. And I did. And so that. And from that came the Enchanted Hour.
- [05:10]
A
Wow. For decades, decades of nightly reading to your children. What you saw for that, for that host, for Lisa is a non negotiable. It was, you know, because you would think, oh, I'm just going to skip it tonight. I've got this party. But no, she still went and did it. And I love what you wrote about in the book about the baby. You're like. The baby did not seem to be aware of what was happening. Was she even listening? Was I supposed to show her the pictures? Wait, is she. Is she asleep? What kind of maniac reads Cinderella to a newborn? But you start and, and then what you talk about in this book, and it is so wonderful, it's like such a relief to read it. You talk about everything from the cuddling together and how the parental voice, you know, even if they're not speaking English yet, you know, they're not speaking is so important for their neurological development. You know, everything from brain waves to comfort to attunement and then. And then all the way through life. Like maybe you're going to read to someone when they're in the hospital, you know, so it just encompasses so much. So I would love to kick it off with this, this wonderful news. This wonderful news that opening up a book can transform a child's brain. More robust activation, a whole bouquet of neurochemicals. It seems too simple, Megan.
- [06:21]
B
I know, doesn't it? But it's one of the most human things that we can do. I mean, as we know, right? Storytelling and the participation in story listening. Storytelling is in fact, one of the human universals, I think there are seven of them. It's just in every society ever recorded or documented, there is storytelling. It's very deep in the human self. And so we have a natural affinity for it, a natural response to it. And so, you know, I think that if you were a spectacular storyteller, you could probably achieve a lot of these same ends just telling stories. But, you know, we have the medium of the book and the book allows us to enter into the imagination of generations and generations and hundreds of years of other people's thinking and imagination. And so it's a wonderful, I think, wonderful mechanism for bringing together all these elements that contribute to human flourishing, you know, connection. Language. Language is very important. I mean, you know, we are seeing, I think in our culture where there's some diminishment of people's appreciation for reading, for language. The numbers are dropping a little in this. But you know, language, to have us develop a facility with language allows a child to express their thoughts, their feelings, that allows them to interact with the world. It's an extremely useful thing. You know, speech is something that we have over the other animals and, you know, it's worth keeping. And so, so I think all of these things come to bear when we sit together. And as you mentioned, there are kind of chemical shifts that take place. There's also one, there was a study a long time ago and I refer to it in the book, but I didn't go into it in great detail, where essentially if people are sitting in a group and one person is reading aloud, let's say, say it's a teacher to a class, which is a wonderful way for this to happen. So fruitful that the brain patterns, if they're monitored, the sort of synchronicity of the brains. No, I'm getting my words mixed up here. What I mean is the brain activities of the reader and listener synchronize. So it's like everyone's having not exactly the same experience because you know, when you, when you bring things to mind in your inner, in your inner eye, as it were yours, what you think of is going to be different from the person next to you. But all of this kind of imaginative entry is taking place at the same time, at the same pace. And that, by the way, Ginny, is one of the great things about reading aloud in a group. And I think it works really well with, if you have a family, it can work in a multi age mixed gathering, let's say over Christmas or Thanksgiving or something. When you have A lot of people in the house. It also works in the classroom, is that everybody at every level gets the story at the same time. And they, so they experience a story which is a kind of individual thing, but they experience it as a, as a group activity with all of the kind of the pleasure of community that comes from that, you know, that feeling of connection to others and you. I mean, I think of the book over and over again. I think of books as almost like a meeting point or a place, a bridge or something. I definitely do write about how in adolescence I found it was with my children, not my adolescents, but my children's adolescence. Reading with them every night was a way for us to connect when it was harder. Especially my son, you know, he's, I mean I was a middle aged lady by that point and he, he was a teenage boy. Like, what do we have in common really? But when we read a story together, wow. We were together, you know, in this little pool of light reading one story. And, and we were, it was like I went, came up on my side of the bridge, he came up on his side of the bridge. I read, he listened, but we were together. And so it's, they're just, they're, they're, they're wonderful tools for all of these things.
- [10:04]
A
What incredible science know like that your brains almost like sync up, you know, that's what's happening. I think it happens when people sing together. There's just a couple different times when that happens. And so like you said, it's like you got this scattered day. Everyone's doing all these different things and so to come together in the evening. And now you do say anytime, any place, are you on the subway, is it breakfast, wherever you can do it, you know, read the books. But this is going to not only help them long term in life, in fact, studies show more than even having elite private schooling education. Reading out loud. I mean. Yeah, but then also you're going to connect. Yeah, right.
- [10:41]
B
And it gets you early. So, so elite private school education, that's all very fine. It's wonderful to be exposed to great literature and poetry and whatnot through that. But in the home, when somebody is young, if it starts early, you know, language acquisition, vocabulary acquisition is a, it's a, it's a, it's a cumulative process. And, and so the more you start out with, the easier it is for you to acquire more language on top of it. So, you know, teachers will. And also there are all these other behaviors that go along with it like that. So you alluded to this kind of chaotic rush to the end of the day. And I think that was really important because sometimes I would think, oh, gosh, I got to get to reading aloud. And it seemed like this kind of almost like a. This, like, tower I had to climb up on. But, boy, once you got there, it was. Oh, this was the moment. This was when everybody. And you could see it wasn't just me, it was everybody else. Everybody sort of could relax into the story at the end of the day, and all of these. All of these comforts took place and all of this enhancement and flourishing took place without any. Really any effort on the part of any of the listeners. And. Yeah, sorry, I left my train of thought there. Excuse me. You're gonna.
- [11:51]
A
I just. I love it. I love it, though. You come together at the end of the day and everybody sort of has this exhale and. And you get to come together, and not only are you, you know, cuddled up and, you know, you're bonding, but you all. You're really setting your kids up for success. Like, you had a. A statistic about how, like, age four, attention span, actually, like, they can extrapolate that out and be like, actually, this affects a lot of things. So. But then you also say, like, if. If you're, like, feeling like you're too late anytime, any place, start anytime.
- [12:20]
B
Oh, 100. Yeah, that's right. And I think that's. That's really. It's really important for parents to recognize people have a lot of ideas about things, and they may or may not be right. It doesn't. I mean, it's fine, you know, but you don't have to be, like, a skilled thespian. You don't have to be able to do all the funny voices to read a. Read a book aloud. You don't have to be. You don't have to be enormously expressive. It's nice if you are. Children like it, but you don't have to be. You don't. You don't have to. I mean, you don't. You don't even have to be very good at reading your own. Like, if English is, for you, a foreign language, you can use picture books and tell stories about those in your own language. Like you. There are all sorts of ways you can interact with books and make them. The point at which you infuse your children. And we're talking here only about children. We could talk about others with all of these fine things. And something else I wanted to mention is that among the behaviors, you get to the top of that tower, I think in the book I described it as a lifeboat. At the end of the day, you kind of clamber onto the lifeboat. You're all spattered with water and food and it's been chaotic, but then you get there and then now you're safe and you're bobbing and you're okay. And part of that lovely relaxing into that experience is you're habituating your children to these very helpful things, like paying attention produces pleasant outcomes. So it kind of teaches attention, they practice attention. I mean, not obviously, there are variations amongst children, but there's the calm receptivity of it, the opening of the mind and the imagination, the attention to language and having language transform in the mind into pictures, you know, learning to follow. Also I think this is. It can't possibly be overstated how valuable the language of books is for the developing mind, because books, you know, occasion language that we don't normally, you know, what do we talk about when we talk, when we're talking to a toddler like, hi, how you doing? Come on over here, sit down.
- [14:22]
A
I was with a toddler yesterday and like goose, you know, because we saw goose, you know, like, that's all I said, over. I was like, goose, you know, honk, right?
- [14:34]
B
But, you know, a picture book about a goose will have more attributes to the goose that you might, than you might say. And so just by exposing a child to the language of books, starting with picture books, but moving on to chapter books and more involved writing, you're just giving them so much more language. And, and with the language they will develop, you know, they develop an awareness of the rules of the grammatical road is, I think the term I use somewhere for it. You know, just syntax, language use, subject, verb, agreement, you know, all of those kind of all of those things that have to be learned. And you know, teachers will tell you that they can tell the well read two children from the non well read two children. And look, I'm not a teacher, but I can tell it too. I've read aloud in classrooms and whatnot. It's actually kind of heartbreaking, Jenny, because the children who are not read to, they're like, they're like starving. They're like, they're like famished. Those are the children who don't know to sit in the circle and wait till you show them the picture or whatever. And they, because they know the story is going to come. They have not been habituated to that. Those are the children who push forward and they almost want to climb into the book. They Want to get in your lap. They want, they just, they can't believe it. Someone is reading to them. It's, it's a pleasure they haven't maybe tasted very often before. And you can tell almost from their disruptive. And they'll barge into the front and get in front of the other kids because they so long to be. They're like little plants. This is not an analogy of my own. This is. Philip Pullman, the novelist, uses this analogy about reading to children, that they won't die without it, but they will bloom with it. You know, they're like their, their imaginations will flourish because of it.
- [16:15]
A
Yeah, I've seen it with play. I've been places like, you know, a little playground and a school bus pulls up and you know, like some of these kids get out and you're like, oh, there's the one that's been starving for movement or starving to get outside. And so you talk about that. This is, it's called the word gap, the unforgiving math of a phenomenal phenomenon called the word gap. And it makes sense because if you have more language, then you can understand more. And then it starts to kind of stack on top of other word Rich students gather more words with each passing year and then they start to pull ahead. And so you talk about this is really great. Even just one book a day is over 200,000 words of text in a year. And you gave some really cool examples like it set your reminder like you were just talking about, you know, goose versus looking at one picture. You talked about one picture in this book. Here's what it contains an amazing number of elements. A mother, a baby, a hammock, a trunk, a tusk, a butterfly, flowers, palm trees, birds, mountains. And the colors, green, red, gray and yellow. In one picture you say, and then you can talk about the COVID What's on the COVID what's in the back cover, you know, what, what's the end papers. Why did they choose those? Are they trying to make a mood? And then you said, even in like a seven minute story like Babar, here's the words fond, satisfied, elegant, learned, becoming, progress, marabou, bird, scold, promises, calamity, funeral, quavering, proposal, splendid, dromedary. I mean, who says dromedary, right? Or a var. Or revoir, honeymoon, a gorgeous yellow balloon. And it does. You know, I actually just yesterday I was interviewing author and I had this happen often where I'm like, okay, I've read a word, but I've actually never said it, you know, so this author, and he's like a pretty famous author, and he had the word in his book immemorial, and I never said it out loud. And I stumbled over it's like immemorial. He was like, I think it's immemorial. And I was like, oh, yeah, there's two M's there. But you can just see how the. The written word is so much more elaborate than goose. Honk.
- [18:11]
B
Yeah, well, right. And there is also this idea of. Of. Of our expressive vocabulary versus our receptive vocabulary. So. And this is important, Jenny, because. So you and I are talking to each other and we are. Therefore, we are using our expressive vocabulary. Okay, dromedary, it's come up. We've now said it twice. So it is. It is in our expressive vocabulary, the word dromedary. But. But it's certainly in our receptive vocabulary. Our receptive vocabulary is for everybody, but especially for children. No, probably for everybody, just vastly greater than our expressive vocabulary. If you listen to people, let's say you're eavesdropping in a restaurant or something, you hear people talking, you're just not going to hear a lot of esoteric language. People are choosing, you know, words of very common understanding to convey things to each other. And you get sort of more nuanced language in books. And that's exactly right. So children can stack their. And presumably they can grow their expressive vocabulary by growing their receptive vocabulary. But it is apparently, I believe it's up until eighth grade. Yeah, eighth grade. That's it. Yeah, up until eighth grade. They're. And I think that, you know, it's possible that there are some people for whom that is, eighth grade is maybe just an early point and they. It will be later, but you start getting. It's only then that you start getting language from, you know, on your own, from reading, let's say. But little children. Teachers speak in very simple language. Parents speak in very simple language. If they're going to get the complicated language that is really going to help them master their own tongue, allow them to speak English or Spanish or whatever it is they speak, they need to be exposed to the words, and we're the people who teach them.
- [20:00]
A
This episode is sponsored by Better Help. May is mental health awareness month, and it's a good reminder that life is a journey with highs and lows. Some days feel light and steady, and other days feel overwhelming, like there are too many things to carry and not enough space to sort through them. I think one of the little lies we believe is that we're supposed to figure it all out on our own. But the truth is no one has all the answers and no journey is meant to be walked alone. Therapy can be a place where you don't have to have it all together, a place to talk through what's keeping you up at night, to gain an outside perspective, and to feel supported instead of stuck. If you've been feeling overwhelmed or unsure, that's more common than we think, and it's okay to get help sorting through it. That's why I appreciate better help. Their therapists are fully licensed in the US and follow a strict code of conduct. They match you with a therapist through a short questionnaire so you can focus on your goals. And if it's not the right fit, you can switch anytime. With over 30,000 therapists and more than 6 million people served globally and an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 across 1.7 million reviews, it's a platform people trust. You don't have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com 1000 hours that's B E T T E R H TLP.com 1000 hours can I just say there was a time when I felt like the family calendar was living in six different places. Some things were in my phone, some things were in Josh's head, some things were written down somewhere, and a lot of it was just missed. And that constant feeling of what am I forgetting? Is exhausting. That is why I love the Skylight Calendar. It brings everything together in one place. Appointments, activities, even grocery lists. And it syncs seamlessly with Google, Apple, Outlook, all of it. So wherever something gets added, it shows up. But the feature that really surprised me is a tasks section for kids. It turns everyday responsibilities like chores or getting ready for the day into something visual and trackable. It helps build independence without me having to constantly remind everyone. And because each person has their own color, there is no confusion. No more. I didn't know it's all right there Skylight Calendar is designed to help families work together, which means less stress and more margin for what actually matters. And if you're not completely thrilled, Skylight offers a full refund within three months, no questions asked. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15 inch calendar when you go to myskylight.com 1000 hours that's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I G H T.com 1000 hours for $30 off, your outdoor space should feel like you. And for the longest time, ours just didn't. We had those random plastic chairs that somehow followed us from house to house, a patio that felt more like a pass through than a place to gather, and a grill that we kept saying we'd replace someday. It just wasn't a space we were excited to use. And then I found Wayfair and everything kind of clicked. We added simple, comfortable seating, an outdoor rug that grounded the space, and a few pieces that actually matched the look I had in my head. Now it feels like an extension of our home. We eat outside more, the kids linger longer, and it's just easier to be out there. What I love is how simple Wayfair makes the process. You can filter by size, style, budget, read real reviews from real homes. And with Wayfair verified, you know, you're choosing from items that have already been vetted for quality. And having everything in one place, from seating to lighting to decor, made it feel manageable instead of overwhelming. Get prepped for patio season. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home.
- [23:16]
B
You know, it's also true, right, that by, by reading them out loud, we are, as in the case of immemorial for you, we're modeling for them how the words are said and it made sometimes. I mean, certainly there are cases where you come across a word and you think, what the heck is that? So one of my favorite words, which I learned from reading Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is the word rantipole. Now, right? You know, rantipole. What is a rantipole? Is it a what even part of speech is that? So a rantipole is a. Is a boisterous youth, but it's like an extremely antiquated term. Nobody says rantipole now. I feel like dromedary and rantball. We have to get them back into circulation. You know, that's. That's the kind of. That's the kind of word I simply would never have encountered. I myself had never encountered. I'm a pretty well read person. I'd never seen that word before, but it was when I was reading out loud that I even noticed the word. We looked it up and now we use it as a family word now, you know, in the way of these things.
- [24:17]
A
Oh, and I love that you talk about that. There's so much to talk about, you know, that you have these little inside. It's not even a joke. It's just like an inside thing that you know collectively you all. That you all know. Like nobody else knows what that word.
- [24:29]
B
Yeah, yeah. I love that's the intimacy of those family words. Every family has them and they come from many sources, but we got a lot of them from books. And I think that's what happens in read aloud families. They. They have those things in common.
- [24:42]
A
Yeah.
- [24:43]
B
There's a line that we use a lot in our family which is I'm all alone in the moon. Which is when. When you feel like. Like, yeah. You just feel all. I'm all alone in the moon. It's from Piglet, from Winnie the Pooh.
- [24:55]
A
Oh. And I love that. Yes. It just continued connection and a different level of understanding of each other. So you talk about this in the book. The book is called the Enchanted Hour. Every family should read it. A child's receptive vocabulary, the words that he understands is thought to be anywhere from one to three years ahead of his expressive vocabulary. The words he can use that. And they don't really catch up often until about the eighth grade. I wanted to just kind of continue just a little bit more on attention. Especially in an age of technology where you say they are encouraged. The. Okay, you call it this. The virtuous behavioral cycle. If they sit still and are quite. They get to hear the story and they get to enjoy it. So you say when it comes to paying attention, children from read aloud families go to school with a triple advantage. They're used to listening, so it's easy for them to do it.
- [25:42]
B
It.
- [25:42]
A
They've heard lots of language, so their comprehension will be comparatively strong. And they know from experience that paying attention brings rewards. These assets are not trivial. And yet we have a whole generation being trained for shorter attention spans. That's what the president of Simon and Schuster, like the book company said. They. They don't even have the attention span often for what a book requires. So can you talk about. There was a study that was in this book and if you don't remember all the details, I. I can remind because I know you've written it for a while ago. And also it's like been translated into every single language pretty much that's out there. I mean it's such a fantastic book. But there was a study where they were looking at the brains of these children. Basically verse. It was like watching something versus listening. Do you know which one I'm talking about?
- [26:26]
B
Oh, I absolutely do.
- [26:27]
A
Okay. Can you tell us about it?
- [26:28]
B
Yeah, so this was a wonderful study done by a guy called John Hutton, Dr. John Hutton, out in Cincinnati Children's Hospital. And he and his colleagues wanted to see sort of what, what was happening in the brains of children. And this is again, as you mentioned, this book came out in 2019. So there are probably there, there may be more sophisticated techniques now, but this was a wonderful vindication of everything that we believe and have. You can sort of see on the outside of children, they could see on the inside of children. So what they did is they put a cohort of four year olds through an FMRI machine and they looked at the patterns of brain activity when under three circumstances. So, and by the way, they were four year old, so they were little, but they were, a lot of them were girls because they stay still more easily in an MRI machine. I mean we've, anyone who's had an MRI, it's like not a nice experience. And actually Dr. Hutton put me through his MRI, so I got to have the experience and it was hard for me to stay still, but. And a little nervy. I was like afraid like, what if I make a mistake? Probably, you know, there's that daunting element. But, but they're essentially, they looked at these children and to see what was happening under three conditions. One was when the children were just listening to a story. Now these are little children, so they're, they're, they're, they're, call it their, their, their library of mental images is going to be necessarily smaller than the library of an older child's mental image image. So, so when they were, the first condition was they were just in the machine listening to a story out loud. It was a recorded story. Then the second was when they were listening to a story and seeing still pictures. Actually the books that they used for this were books by the Canadian writer Robert Munch. M U N S C H He did that book love you Forever, which is. I banned it for life. I will never look at that. It makes me cry. Just the sight of the book. I cannot have it in my house. People give it to me sometimes I will not have it. But, so, so there was the first condition, I'm sorry, making this long winded. But the first condition is just listening to the story. The second is listening to the story while looking at still pictures, which is very similar to a picture book read aloud. And the third was an animated video of the story. What the researchers found, Dr. Hutton and his colleagues found was that with the first condition, which is just the voice with these Little four year olds, there was a little brain activity but not a huge amount because they were just, they were, it was probably a little distracting whatnot. But they didn't have these mental images. With the second situation where they were looking at still pictures and listening to a story, all the brain domains began to kind of communicate with each other. All of the messages were going back and forth between visualization and auditory function and such. And then, and then the third circumstance, which was children watching a video, which is, you know, realistically what a lot of children do a lot of the time is they, they watch moving things. You know what was happening in their brains, Jenny? Nothing. Nothing was happening in their brains. Their brains. It was going too fast for them. So they got their. No, there was, there was one part that was activated. I think it was visual recognition.
- [29:45]
A
Just the visual?
- [29:46]
B
Yeah, just the visual. So you could see the shock and all, like something's happening. But there was no time for the child's developing brain to kind of put things together. You know, if you and I, we know what a duck is. So if someone says to us, duck, we have a mental image of a duck. So a four year old might or might not have a mental image of a duck. But if a four year old hears the word duck and sees a picture of the duck, there's a process taking place. It's not instantaneous. So what this study, what the study found was that the ideal condition for brain activity in 4 year olds is reading a picture book to them. So the pictures are not jumping around. They have time for their brain to process what they're seeing and hearing. They have all of those other things we talked about, like the coziness of an adult and also the responsiveness of an adult who's right there listening to them and you know, following up on them and attentive to whether or not they need to be directed or have anything explained. So yes, so it was a wonderful scientific validation of the thing that those of us who love to read to children because we see what it does to children, of what we do. And it's also great if you're one of those moms, as I was am, who kind of discouraged the watching of television and videos and such. It's also validation for you because you're doing the right thing. You know, it's not going to kill anyone to watch a video, but you're also losing time, like you're not developing. And that's what, that's important with young children. You know, they sleep a lot, they're Awake less than we are awake. So we can afford to waste more of our time in a way than they can afford to waste of theirs.
- [31:30]
A
That's right. And I mean, this is their explosive growth time. This is the unforgiving math of the word gap. So, okay, so you talk about. And you can just is. I loved reading about it in your book the Enchanted Hour, because you can just envision it. You're like, okay. You know, when the kid is looking at these pictures and they're hearing the story, there's like basically stuff going on all over the brain and it's connecting and, you know, and then all of a sudden they put on the video and it just like, you know.
- [31:55]
B
Yeah.
- [31:56]
A
You say it basically looks like it flatlined. All the red colors had turned blue. The brain seems like it stops doing anything at all. And there is still a little bit of the visual because they are watching.
- [32:07]
B
Yeah.
- [32:07]
A
Then they, you know, it's like there's the chance that they're going to become more dependent on stuff being fed to them passively. Nothing pretty much is happening in their heads when they're watching the video. And so you say this, you know that there's optimal patterns of brain development that can happen. There's stronger parent child relationships. There's skills that lasted lifetime. If reading aloud were a pill, every child in the country would get a prescription. Instead, we're giving them screens.
- [32:32]
B
Yeah. I think actually my particular passionate cause and your particular passionate cause work really well together. Because I think being outside and experiencing physical play and activity and the great sky above you and all of the soothing elements of nature and activity and using your body, doing that during the day, coming in and reading at night, that's just about. Those are the perfect conditions.
- [32:58]
A
That's like the prescription.
- [33:00]
B
It's the prescription. Yeah. Get some sunshine, some exercise and some story. Yeah, yeah. From someone who loves you.
- [33:07]
A
Yeah.
- [33:07]
B
And you know, Ginny, there's one other thing I'd like to say, if I may. You know, we do talk a lot about reading aloud in the context of young children because it's so important for young children. But as you alluded to earlier, it's really something that can be done at all stages of life. It is a relationship enhancer at all stages of life. And it's a wonderful point of connection at all stages of life. Life. When my mother was dying a couple years ago, I read to her and she loved it. I read her the Wind in the Willows, which she loved, but I also read her Rudyard Kipling's Just so Stories. And my mother was born in South Africa, but moved here when she was a teenager. And she hadn't heard Rudyard Kipling's Just so Stories since she was a little girl in South Africa when her mother read it to her. And then she must have read them to me when I was a child or gave me a book. I don't know if she read them to me or not. I don't have any memory of that. And then I read them to my children. And then so there was this, like, almost this wonderful kind of connection through time and generations. So when I, her daughter, read her the book that her mother had read her, it was very moving for her. It was very moving for me, too. So here's my mom. She's afflicted, she's on the skids. She's on her way out of this world. And we had this magnificent point of connection before she left. So I really. I really recommend it. I think there are circumstances in which reading aloud is difficult. If somebody is deaf, for instance, it's quite difficult to read to them, you know, that just is. Or if somebody has autism and can't sit still, it can be difficult to connect. I mean, these are. These are hard circumstances. But, you know, in the case of. With elderly people, reading aloud has been shown to be very efficacious for people even suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's and such, that it's a way. It can unlock something in people. So particularly in the case, as with my mother, of the Kipling, My mom didn't have Alzheimer's. But, you know, something. A story from their own childhood can be such a gift to somebody on the far end of life to have it given to them. You know, I think I wrote this. I certainly think about this a lot when. When you read aloud to someone. I mean, it really is a. It is an act of generosity and love. You're. You're lifting words off the page, and you are bringing them into the air, and you're like. It's like a balloon and you're popping. You're sending them over to a person you love. And these. So you're. You're. It's like, you're. It's like a. It's like an invisible caress. You're using your voice to lift a piece of work, of a work of art off the page and give it to someone in a way that's very easy for them to receive. It goes right in through the ears.
- [35:58]
A
I think for a long time, I underestimated how much your outdoor space impacts your day to day life because ours just wasn't working. It felt unfinished. We had a couple mismatched chairs, no real place to sit comfortably, and I've always had this idea that I'd add lighting or make it feel cozy, but never actually got around to it. Then we started looking on Wayfair and it made the whole process feel doable. We found pieces that actually fit our style. Simple, functional, a little bit modern, but still warm. And suddenly the space came together. We added seating, a few subtle decor touches, and now it's a place we naturally end up at the end of the day. The best part is how easy Wayfair makes it to get there. You can narrow everything down so quickly, compare options, read thousands of reviews and feel confident in what you're choosing. And delivery was seamless, which matters when you're trying to upgrade a space without adding more stress, less it finally feels like a space we use instead of a void. Get prepped for patio season for way less head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair every style, every Home Lately I've been more intentional about what I wear day to day and being drawn into pieces that feel effortless, comfortable and still put together. It makes getting dressed so much simpler. And honestly, Quints has been my go to the fabric feel elevated, the fits are flattering and everything just works without overthinking it. Quince makes it really easy to refresh your everyday this spring with pieces that feel as good as they look. They use premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton and ultra soft denim so everything feels high quality right from the start. Their lightweight linen pants, dresses and tops start at just $30 and they're breathable, easy to wear and perfect for repeating throughout the week without getting tired of them. And I have to say the everyday fleece joggers have been such a win for me, especially on those cooler spring mornings. They're soft, they fit really well and they still look put together enough to wear out of the house, which I love. Everything at quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality and craftsmanship, not brand markup. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com outside for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada to you. That's Q U-I-N-C-E.com outside for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com outside this time of year in homeschooling is really special. You're wrapping up projects, looking at how far your kids have come and helping them finish strong. It's also a great moment to reinforce key skills and build confidence as you head into summer. And as routines start to shift with travel camps and more time outside, it helps to have something that keeps learning steady without overcomplicating your days. That's where IXL can be such a helpful tool. IXL is an award winning online learning platform that fits seamlessly into homeschooling. It offers interactive practice across math, language arts, science and social studies from Pre K through 12th grade. It personalizes learning for each child, keeps them engaged, and gives parents clear insight into progress. What stands out is the real time feedback and progress tracking. Kids get immediate explanations as they go and you can clearly see growth over time, what's clicking and where. A little reinforcement can go a long way. It's a simple way to finish the year strong and keep skills fresh heading into the summer. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now and 1000 Hours Outside listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at ixl.com 1000hours Visit ixl.com 1000hours to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.
- [39:20]
B
You know, speech is natural to people. Speech is normal. It's our native language. As Dante said, reading is, you know, it's a wonderful thing that humans can read. But you know, it takes a lot of study to be able to read. And it's almost like you short circuit that for the person you're giving the gift of reading aloud to. If you're reading to them, they don't have to do the decoding from the page. They can just sit and take in the story and feel that invisible caress. You know, it's a really. So it's, it's got all these great side effects, but it's also just a beautiful human thing to do.
- [40:01]
A
Oh, and don't we want to do beautiful human things? Yes. Goodness. In the age of AI, you know, you talk about that you have this secret society then like with the people that you're reading to to because you've shared these experiences and some of that you quoted in the book said kind of like what you're talking about with Rudyard Kipling, that this was a Man. He said, it gave me a nightly experience to reconnect. Nightly reading gave me a chance to reconnect with the books I loved as a boy. And I love that you wrote about in the Enchanted Hour, Megan. Like, I. I mean, you wrote. You give the statistic, like, it's usually around age 5 that we kind of stop doing this. And kids, you know, their statistics, like, they want their parents. Parents to keep reading to them. But I would never have considered this act of reading together as adults. And you're like, it actually used to be super normal, like Charles Dickens did it. It was actually considered odd to read to yourself. And so you talked about, like, all right, when someone. There's a chapter called from the Nursery to the Nursing Home, and you said this. It is really hard to sit with a person in a hospital. They are going through so much, and it feels like there's nothing to talk about except their medical. Medical situation. And so this reading aloud, it just gives you an opportunity to do something different and imagine. And. And I could imagine that if they did the MRI machine on. On someone who's in the hospital, you know, that there's probably the different parts of the brain light up then, too, you know, hope and interest and excitement and, you know, as opposed to just sort of this drudgery of what's wrong. Can you talk about teens, too, as one other group of, you know, the book is like, this is not just for small children. Of course, it's very important for small children. But you say that when you talk about reading out loud about teens, that people push back. And you gave the example of when you read Outsiders to a bunch of eighth graders.
- [41:49]
B
Yeah. So with. With teenagers, of course, is this is where you mentioned at the very beginning, like, you know, you can read anywhere. You could read in the. Read at breakfast, read it, whatever. So I think that. I think there's probably a natural process by which teenagers don't want to be, you know, they don't want to be babied at a certain point. They don't. It's a little awkward. You don't want to sit with your mom. You don't want to sit with the younger, you know, the younger siblings, necessarily. Although it's very interesting. I saw. And perhaps you see, and I think a lot of mothers of larger families see this, that they'll read to the little ones, and the older ones will sort of hover on the outside, like, yeah, I'm too cool to pay attention to the story. But I love that page. You know, I love that Picture. So I think we have to be a little forgiving. I mean, you can't compel people to listen to you read. It might feel a little too much like being babied and that teenagers. That's odious for them. So what I recommend and what I did myself is to bring it into different times of the day. So I used to read. I had some teenagers who had to catch a carpool at a certain point in the morning, and I would come down while they were slumping around the kitchen and, you know, hating everything, and I would read to them. And. And there was one in particular. She was the first daughter of mine to sort of leave the reading circle. She. She kind of didn't want. She wanted to be independent more than the others, I think, probably. But she was the one who liked that the most. She just loved it. It was like she experienced it as. Not as overbearing maternal involvement, but as a kind of, you know, a gift. Like a free thing in the morning, like, oh, I'm gonna eat my cereal, and I get to listen to, you know, a William Stagg story out loud. And I. And I also would really like to recommend. I know I alluded to this earlier, but with my son, you know, when he was a teenager, he had. He had very much grown up in the tradition with our family, reading aloud. He was a very enthusiastic listener, you know, really loved the stories. Kind of grew up with Treasure island, you know, read it. We read it every year, and he just loved it. But then, you know, he didn't want to be with this. So I've. I have four girls and one boy, and. And I think, you know, in that natural teenage way, he didn't really want to be cuddled up with his sisters. Like, there was something kind of not cool about that. But he would still sit with me, and as long as he would do it, we would come after dinner, I would read to the girls, and I would come down with. And he'd have his special, like, grown up time. And we would sit on the sofa in my office and I would read it aloud to him. And. And I remember noticing he didn't always want to sit right next to me. He would sit 1.5 inches away or something. Like, I'm independent, and I don't mean to mock him. I think it's very normal that you would feel that way. But we were able to connect through these stories, and we kept it going. And then when it came to an end, unfortunately, it does come to an end for most of us. I mean, there are heroic stories. I think the New York Times had a guy the. A couple of years ago who was still reading to his daughter every night. And she was in college, but she would call him and he would read some people, you know, that's great. My feeling is read to them as long as they will let you in any circumstance that you can make it happen. I do think that reading in the bath can be very helpful if you have a bunch of little kids at the same time. That can be very useful. Actually, one of our. We have this beautiful edition of the Chronicles of Narnia, beautiful hardcover edition. And the Voyage of the Dawn Treader has really wavy pages because it went into the bath once
- [45:20]
A
anytime, any place.
- [45:22]
B
Yeah, that's right.
- [45:23]
A
Be prepared to air out your books. I want to read what you wrote. You have. You are such an incredible writer. I'm going to read a couple things. This is actually from the introduction of the book. Family life can be a hectic and flailing business. Sometimes it's a struggle to keep everyone afloat, let alone haul them onto a read aloud raft at bedtime.
- [45:41]
B
It's just such. There we go, the raft.
- [45:43]
A
Here's what you talk about. For teens, reading every day or close to. It takes discipline. When children are little, it takes a real act of will. As they get older and other claims begin to enro. Encroach on the time they have at home, schoolwork, sports, friends, part time jobs and the temptations of technology will try to crowd out regular reading. Don't let it. This is a battle worth winning. Making the time to read together is almost an obstinate act of love. And then you talked about. I don't know if it was you, but in. I got a couple new books after reading yours. And you've got booklets in here too. But you talked about for eighth graders reading the end of. I've not read Outsiders. But you say when Ponyboy reads Johnny's letter at the end of the Outsiders, you can hear a pin drop. This. Someone else said this.
- [46:31]
B
Yes, that's right. That's a teacher. Yeah, yeah.
- [46:34]
A
They were reading and they said you can hear a pin drop. Like they don't discount this. And actually, you know, talking about that pre. Teen, teen age, you talked about your daughter flora and she's 11. So in that preteen age. And you read Dracula.
- [46:48]
B
I know. I think back on that now. I think how did I. How did we pull that off? But I think I was, I was really good at reading aloud by that point. But maybe a Little rusty now, but I could, I pulled off all these crazy accents. She was riveted. She was absolutely riveted. It's a really scary book, but it's also, it's very antiquated language. I mean, it was written 1898, I think it came out. You know, it's. And it's also, it's like one of those. But yeah, but if you train them up in books, they will be. It's all accessible to them. I think there were some books I know that we bailed on over the years, Flora and I never, we could never, I'm afraid we could never make Tolkien work for us. We tried the Lord of the Rings. It just couldn't, it just didn't get any traction for us. We just couldn't make it happen. I also years ago tried to read 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and also the Swiss Family Robinson to my two eldest. And we, everyone got, I mean, the thing about Swiss Family Robinson is it's kind of a wish fulfillment story. So this family, they're washed up on an island, but then, and they don't have anything then very conveniently there's like all the contents of a shipwreck. So they're like, you know what I could really use is I could use some nice bacon from a barrel. Why, look, there's a barrel on the. So I can see how the book would have worked, you know, maybe in a previous, previous, you know, era. But we couldn't, we, we just all just thought, this is just ridiculous. Like, oh, what I really need is a Shifa robe right now. Oh, look, there's a Shifa robe.
- [48:21]
A
But I love that you brought that up because one of the books that my 9 year old daughter carries around with her everywhere is Swiss Family Robinson. So it's up to each their own, right? It's like, and you bail on the ones because there'd be people listening that be like, we love Tolkien. You know, some people will be like, you know, you brought up, I just brought up outsiders. They'd be like, we didn't like that book. Whatever it is, you give the permission. Bailiff. It's not working. You know, you said it's not always sunshine and roses, you know, at night. Like, sometimes the books don't work. You have to, to move on. But, but, you know, you just don't know. And with Dracula, you said Flora drank in every word and she would have listened for hours every night rather than just the one I could give her. When I finished reading, there was silence. Flora looked shocked. And regretful the story was over. Let's read it again. You know how a two year old might be like, you know, let's read it again.
- [49:10]
B
Again. Again. Yeah, whatever, whatever that is. That's a big, that's a big clue that the. Whatever you want. I did not read Dracula again. So full disclosure, I did not.
- [49:19]
A
You don't know and you try. You really don't, you know, you try. So that actually also is a segue into the point of. For if you're, if you're kind of starting late later, you know, you're listening to this and like, I don't have a 3 year old anymore. Maybe I don't even have an 11 year old anymore. You talked about in this book and this is common, you hear this college professors, so this is like post childhood who are saying things like, I have students who have never, they've never read one book from COVID to cover, never read a book all the way through. So it's never too late, anytime, any place. And so what this particular college professor talked about that you had interviewed, she's like, look, I give him something juicy.
- [49:59]
B
Yeah, I love this. Fantastic.
- [50:02]
A
Yeah, the, the juiciest, most exciting, accessible material she could find. Salic I. Salacious, salacious thrillers with short chapters and lots of action. The book is called Sale by James Patterson. You know, I mean, the kids listen in. So I'm like, but it's a, it's a book, you know, it's a woman and there's all these things going on. And she said her students love it. And this is one of my favorite lines I've ever read in any book. So, you know, you know, she starts this and here, here's a kid never read a book cover to cover and says this. I was up until 4 in the morning finishing this book where you left off and then said, oh, there's another book by the same author. And it sounds interesting. And that's from a child who. That is the first book they ever read. And so it just goes to show you, it's never too late.
- [50:53]
B
Yeah, no, that's right. And that's right. And that's why I think, you know, it's also true that, that if, you know, if teachers can, I don't. I mean, I think it's just, it's sort of, it's just fading from the culture in a way. But when teachers read aloud to their students. Okay, that was the example you gave there was that she was a community college teacher and so yeah, her students had had some of Them had pretty rough lives. Some of them even came from prison to go to that class. And they just had, you know, and as we know, there's a connection between literacy and kind of, you know, flourishing in conventional ways and non flourishing in conventional ways. When, when a teacher reads to a class, what's one of the, I think one of the loveliest things, because it really, this is really for everybody and it's really for any, like, it's, it's fine what you, as you said, read what you want. You don't have to read what other people read. Like that's fine. Like choose your own stuff. And if people get up and move around, let them get them move around. You just keep reading because you know what? Everyone needs to move sometimes. But one of the beautiful things that happens when in a classroom, and you can really imagine this being important in middle school, is when the teacher reads aloud. Everybody, the able students who can read for themselves, who've been read to at home, the a kids, the girl in the front row, whatever, they're getting the story at the same time and in the same way as the kid slumping in the back, who's never read a book, whose parents don't read aloud at home, who, you know, and that kid gets it too. So there's a kind of, it's not, it's not like an equalizing thing. It's like an uplifting thing. It's like, like. And I do think reading aloud is one of those ways in which children who struggle can have the experience of kind of imaginative voyaging that children who don't struggle get all the time. You know, if you, if you, if you're, if you struggle with reading, you stress about it. I mean, I remember myself, I was a pretty good reader. But even in, in English class, you know, let's say the teacher was going around the room and you were going to have to read a paragraph out loud. So what are you doing? You're not listening to the story. You're panicking about the fact that you're going to make a mistake and someone's going to laugh. So that's what you're focusing on. And that's, and that's true of kids who are really good at school. But the kids who are not good at school for all kinds of reasons, that's torture. So when you read to them, you free them from that. You create this like, safe space where they can experience literature. And I love that because I want this for everybody. You know, you don't have to be you know, from any kind of family or any kind of background, it's accessible to all. And it's. I mean, really, it is free. Reading aloud is free. You just need to make the time for it. You can read almost anything, and you just need to make the time. So there's an opportunity, cost of time. That's it, really.
- [53:35]
A
Yeah. I love that you said that, you know, because nature is, like we talked about earlier is the same. You know, nature will meet you at any point. You know, are you two months old? Are you 102? You know, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Your background. It's going to have something for you. And you had talked about that. I can't find it in my notes. But you had talked about, like, you know, maybe there's a kid who's in the eighth grade and they are a little bit behind on their reading and the parent could read it aloud to them instead of them struggling through and they're not going to understand it, you know, and it's. So you talk a lot about audiobooks and how audiobooks are not cheating a suburb. A superb audio recording is a work of art, a creation not so different in certain respects from a marble bust or a portrait in oils. I mean, what a book. And you say, you know, 20% of American teenagers are leaving high school functionally illiterate. They. They can't read and write super well. It's an. It's kind of an awful way to start adult life. But here's this college professor who's like, find the juicy book, you know?
- [54:26]
B
Yeah, I love that.
- [54:27]
A
From one to the next. And it's going to make such a big difference in their lives. And you even said this. You said repressive governments limit people's access to books and information.
- [54:38]
B
Right. But at home, you can read and discuss anything you want.
- [54:42]
A
Yeah, yeah. And just to know that, like, you know, this is. This is a, you know, a tool of tyranny in the past is like, yes. You know, is kind of tamping people. I don't even know that's the right word. But, like, pushing people down to, you know, what they can do and what their. What they have access to. And, like, if you don't read well, even if the book's available, 64% of us fourth graders didn't meet the standard for proficient reading in 2015. You know, say, this is grim stuff. This is what you're writing about in your book. It is just, I mean, a phenomenal book. Can you. Can you tell us? Because okay, we talked at the beginning. You go to this party, then you have these two decades of, you know, reading with your kids. But also, this is really unique because I've never talked to anybody else who.
- [55:24]
B
Who's.
- [55:25]
A
Who really has even covered books in general. But you worked for the Wall Street Journal covering children's literature. Yeah, a teeny bit about that. Like, that job.
- [55:37]
B
Well, you know, I don't know. The shoe fit, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I. Look, I had been journalist for a long time, and then this opportunity came up, and I had all these little children at home. I thought, well, sure, you know, you don't turn work down. Right. And it started as a small thing in 2005. They wanted me to contribute. Like, it was really small. It was like one column about one book every couple of weeks or something. And then it turned into. It, you know, turned into a weekly thing, and it got bigger and bigger and bigger and. Yeah, and it turned into Ginny turned into 20 years of my life. I was writing about children's books, and my house was. Was. Fire hose is not the right metaphor, but if you can imagine a fire hose that delivers books, that's what happened in my house. It was just like spraying all of her books absolutely everywhere. And, yeah, it's. And it was real. It was really interesting. But, you know, I would say we. We went through a lot of cultural changes in the last, you know, decade, and unfortunately, some of. Some of the more faddish stuff really made its way into children's books. And I. And I do think, you know, children are new in the world and they deserve the best of everything. That's been. My own feeling is that children deserve the best of everything that's been written or said. They have a right to it. It's the. The things from the past that are the best things that have lasted because they're good. They belong to all children now. You know, they belong to all of us. They're not. They're not. Again, not just for the highly educated or the affluent or whatever, but every kid. So a story like, okay, this is. Let's talk about a really old story. Talk about the. The Odyssey or the Iliad or the great. The great myths and legends. Those. Those are the property of children right now. Your children, their children and their children's children. And we have a. I think we have a kind of a duty as. As adults and parents, as we're kind of custodians of our own culture. And reading aloud is a way to kind of pass these things on. Or, or reading. Making sure that children get exposed to them. So how is this connected to writing about books for the Journal? I, One of the things I tried to do in my. When I was covering that exclusively was to identify books that might be lasting, you know, that were, that had real lasting value. And I think the truth is most books aren't going to last because they're just not good enough. They just don't have a spark that they really need or the illustrations are just a little, you know, that's that. But I think that's always been the case, you know, ever since, Ever since people have had books that, you know, there are people who were terribly famous 100 years ago we've forgotten about now. Well, that's because they didn't last. So, you know, I, I, it was a great privilege to be able to make those judgments. I will say that I think the best picture book, and I think it should last of, of the last 20 years, is they All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel. Did you ever see that book?
- [58:33]
A
I've never seen it.
- [58:34]
B
Oh, I, to my mind, it's just, it's, it just, it. I read it. I thought this is, this came straight out of somewhere else. Like, this is, it's just great. It's, it's just, it's a simple rhyming story. Rhyming kind of picture book about, about all the. A cat is walking through the world and everyone's seeing the cat. So a dog sees the cat, but what does he see? He sees it. He sees his idea of a cat. So it gives you an interesting idea of perspectives and it has a wonderful rhyming. There's a kind of, there's a little kind of almost Kipling like, rhythm to it.
- [59:07]
A
Yeah.
- [59:07]
B
Anyway, so that's the kind of. That was a, that was, that was a real privilege and pleasure.
- [59:12]
A
One of my favorite kids books, I would say my favorite kid book that I was exposed to as an adult because I think it wasn't out when I was a kid is Seven. The Seven Silly Eaters. I mean, is by far. I don't know if you read that one with your kids.
- [59:22]
B
I don't know it.
- [59:23]
A
Oh, I'm gonna show you it, actually.
- [59:24]
B
Okay, dude.
- [59:26]
A
I have actually a copy right here because sometimes I give it away. It's like my absolute favorite. I'm gonna send you a copy. Yeah, do your grandkids, kids. It is, it is my favorite, the Seven Silly Eaters. As soon as I'm done with.
- [59:39]
B
I know. She's wonderful.
- [59:40]
A
I'm sending this. You're gonna love reading this with your grandkids. I have an extra copy right here. I'm gonna pop it in the mail. Megan, this has been such a treat. I want to read. You say the emotional rewards of reading aloud are wildly out of proportion to the effort it takes. We have everything to gain and no time to waste. In the tech era, we can all benefit from from what reading aloud supplies. But with children, the need is urgent. Many young people are spending as many as nine hours a day on a screen. They are surrounded by technology. It informs their world. It absorbs their attention. It commandeers their hands and eyes. And they need adults in their lives to read books to them, not despite it, but because of it. Reading aloud is a restorative that can replenish what technology leeches away. Before we wrap it up, can you tell people about your memoir that's coming out?
- [60:23]
B
Oh, you sweetie. Yes, I have a memoir coming out, out in the fall, October 20th. It's called free Range Girl. And it is the account of a. Of a very unusual year in my life when I was. I was 12 years, you know, 12 to 13. It's a big time in everyone's life. For me, that was in 1976, 1977. So a lost world before the technology we have now. I mean, it was a completely different world. We lived completely differently. And I was. I moved at that time to live with my dad. My parents were divorced and my moved up to Maine to live with my dad in a homestead that he was building with his own hands. He was part of something called the back to the land movement, where people were trying to live in the country. Kind of like, you know, I mean, there have been these waves in American history that people have done this, and this was one of those times. Kind of idealistic, dreamy, historical, romantic kind of approach to the world. You know, we didn't have indoor plumbing. We didn't have. We had an outhouse, and I had books as my companions and. And I had a horse that I rode without a helmet because that's how we did it back then. That's how we rolled and. Yeah, and I had a bad accident and I spent a week in the hospital. So it's all told in Free Range Girl.
- [61:36]
A
People can order it now already out for pre order, and hopefully we'll get to talk about it in the fall. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside.
- [61:45]
B
Oh, favorite memory from my childhood that was outside. Okay. What I loved doing for years in the spring. I think of this every spring is. I would love, I loved to crouch down in the roots of trees and make fairy houses. So I would, you know, if you had, let's say you had a bit of moss and a tree root and there was a little gap under the. You could pretend that a fairy lived there and that was her forest, you know. And I would sometimes do little things, like I would make little tiny cardboard doors and put them in the roots of trees so that I could imagine even more. And that was my favorite thing to do. I loved, I loved making fairy houses in the roots of trees and. Yeah, and climbing trees, of course, because that's what we did.
- [62:32]
A
Oh, I love it. So much imagination. Megan. What a treat to get to talk with you about this phenomenally life changing book that has been cheap change in almost every language, you know, all the way to Romania. If you go on your website@megancoxgirden.com you're like, oh, there's that language and that cover and it's just, it's so needed. So thank you, thank you for writing the book. Thanks for taking the time to be with us today and I can't wait to read the memoir.
- [62:56]
B
Oh, Jenny, thank you so much. It's a joy to talk to you and I love how you yell. It's so exciting.