Product Review

Reading aloud is the single most important contribution an adult can make to a child's success in school. More Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children, like its predecessor, Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children, gives parents and other adult readers the help they need to share an experience with children that is both important and fun.

Educator William E Russell, Ed.D., has compiled a collection of great stories, poems, and excerpts from novels and plays that spans centuries and styles. Complete with introductions and pronunciation guides for each selection, and divided into three different listening levels (for children 5 and up, 8 and up, and 11 and up), these classics make accessible and entertaining tales for reader and listener alike.

From Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes" and Shakespeare's Macbeth, to stories by Mark Twain, O. Henry, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and scenes from Little Women, Through the Looking-Glass, Beowulf, Treasure Island, and Helen Keller's autobiography, these stories will delight any child. More Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children includes speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., along with a selection of poems, from Shakespeare's sonnets to "Arithmetic" by Carl Sandburg and "Birches" by Robert Frost.

Reading aloud, says Dr. Russell, creates "teachable moments: sparks of interest in learning about where or when or how an event in the story occurred; moments at which a child practically demands to be taught." Like the original Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children, this book serves a growing need among children and adults for that "teachable moment" and is destined to become a classic in its own right.