WRAD Blogging Challenge: Week One

World Read Aloud Day Blogging Challenge: 

Week 1: February 10 - 16

What is your earliest or fondest memory in which someone read aloud to you?

I answered a question similar to this one in a WRAD blogging challenge thrown down by John Schu on his blog, Watch.Connect.Read. My top read aloud experiences, in sixty second, are these.

Among those top read aloud experiences is one related to today's blog challenge. If I think about being the recipient of a read aloud experience, I would quickly slip back to a space filled with my mother's voice, reading aloud from A.A.Milne books of poetry, Now We Are Six, Poems for the Very Young.  Poems like the two below, for which I have included excerpts:

King John's Christmas

‘I did want crackers,
And I did want candy;
I know a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I do love oranges,
I did want nuts.
I haven’t got a pocket-knife –
Not one that cuts.
And, oh! if Father Christmas had loved me at all,
He would have brought a big, red india-rubber ball!’

King John stood by the window,
And frowned to see below
The happy bands of boys and girls
All playing in the snow.
A while he stood there watching,
And envying them all . . .
When through the window big and red
There hurtled by his royal head,
And bounced and fell upon the bed,
An india-rubber ball!

Rice Pudding
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She’s crying with all her might and main,
And she won’t eat her dinner—rice pudding again—
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
I’ve promised her dolls and a daisy-chain,
And a book about animals—all in vain—
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She’s perfectly well, and she hasn’t a pain;
But, look at her, now she’s beginning again!
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

I can still recite these two poems and many others from heart. My mother filled my head and my heart with words, with language, with beauty. I didn't realize then the gift she was giving.  

Join with me and Raise Your Voice to make this experience a reality for children across the globe. Read Aloud on March 4th. Join the #WRAD movement.