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5 Read-Aloud Books for Parental Hams
Being a parent is often more theatrical than I expected. When my daughter was a baby with high demands for entertainment, I had to maintain a running narration of what I was doing, interspersed with various song and dance numbers, to keep her content. It was like the most boring musical ever performed as I segued from a play-by-play of the egg I was frying to a rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema.” Although I never had any Hollywood ambitions, the latent performer in me really comes out at story time. I was sad when I finished reading the final installment of the Harry Potter books to my kids in part because I knew there would rarely, if ever, be a call for me to reprise my Professor Snape accent. Still, there are plenty of other engaging read-aloud books for kids that will allow parental hams like me a chance to perform. Here are five to check out.
Epossumondas, by Coleen Salley, illustrated by Janet Stevens
It’s little wonder that Coleen Salley’s Epossomundas books are fun to read aloud—she was a first-rate performer and storyteller, reading to children at hundreds of libraries across the country and even entertaining audiences at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Janet Stevens captures Salley’s likeness in the Epossomundas books, in which she appears in her characteristic flowered hat and dress as the caretaker of a loveable opossum in a diaper. Get your Southern accent ready, folks, and pour that syrup on thick.
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The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, by Beatrix Potter
Of all the children’s books that invite the reader to perform a British accent, The Tale of Jeremy Fisher is my favorite, maybe because it’s about a terribly proper gentleman frog. He decides to invite two friends for dinner if he can catch at least five minnows. Mishaps keep him from attaining this goal, but his friends come to visit anyway, bringing food to share. My favorite line to read aloud is the last: “And instead of a nice dish of minnows, they had a roasted grasshopper with lady-bird sauce, which frogs consider a beautiful treat; but I think it must have been nasty!”
Orangutan Tongs: Poems to Tangle Your Tongue, by Jon Agee
I always turn to Jon Agee’s books for their fresh wit and great characters. (Why oh why can’t Tubby Portobello, a minor character from Nothing, star in his own book?) Orangutan Tongs is the best one to read aloud, a book full of silly, hilarious tongue twisters and wonderful illustrations to match. My family’s favorite is probably the one that begins “There are lots of holes in Andy Bundy’s undies.”
Dust Devil, by Anne Isaacs
This Western tall tale, the sequel to Swamp Angel, concerns Angelica Longrider, “the wildest wildcat in Tennessee,” who grows too big for her home state and heads west to Montana in 1831. There the Paul Bunyan-sized Angel rides a ferocious dust devil and tames it into a horse she can ride, which enables her to take on the despicable Backward Bart and his Flying Desperadoes.
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How Are You Peeling?, by Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann
No funny accents are required for reading this heartfelt book of pure fruit and vegetable sweetness by Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann. Elffers creates preternaturally expressive produce just by adding a couple of black-eyed pea eyes to a pepper, for example, and Freymann’s story invites youngsters to consider and think about their feelings and those of others. It’s a great story for a tender read aloud.
What are your favorite books to read aloud?