We want to model a love of reading for our kids, but honestly- who’s got the time?
Anne Bogel does. Otherwise known as Modern Mrs. Darcy, she’s the best person I know to talk about how to fit more reading into your life. If you’re hoping to make reading a bigger part of your days, listen in to today’s podcast!
P.S. Our 31-Day Winter Read-Aloud Challenge starts January 1! Join thousands of others and turn your kids into read-alouders. It’s free, it’s fabulous, and you can get everything you need right here.
Click that play button below to hear the podcast!
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Books from this episode:
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Books from today’s episode:
- Harry Potter
- Emily of New Moon
- The Babysitters Club series
- The Disney Fairies books
- The fairy series by Daisy Meadows
- The Sweet Valley High series
- The Professor and the Madman
- Harry Potter
- Undaunted Courage
- No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
- Little House on the Prairie
- Mrs. Dalloway
- Books by Charles Dickens
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- The Chronicles of Narnia
- The Mouse and the Motorcycle
- A Series of Unfortunate Events
- On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
- The Wind in the Willows
- Mary Poppins
- Peter Pan
- The Hobbit
- The Borrowers
- Magyk
- Half Magic (and other Edward Eager books)
- Redwall
Other links from today’s show:
- To learn about gift subscriptions to the Read-Aloud Revival membership site, head here and click on the “Gift” button
- For more information about membership, head to ReadAloudRevival.com and click on the “Discover Membership” button
- Anne’s printable reading journal
- 7 Ways Audiobooks Enrich Our Homeschool
- Anne’s 2015 Summer Reading Guide
- Anne’s goodreads account
- My post, How I’m Using Spiral Notebooks to Simplify Homeschooling (where I talk about using the last 10 pages for a book list!)
- Anne on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest
- Little Free Libraries
- Anne’s Literary Matchmaking series
- My Hobbit confession!
- The Secret World of Arrietty
Follow Anne!
Anne’s site: Modern Mrs. Darcy
Very encouraging! What do you think is the best deal for audio book subscriptions? Audible only gives you one book a month, which means you end up paying $10 a book. Doesn’t seem like a good discount for a digital book, especially if you only listen once. I haven’t tried Overdrive yet but will look into that.
I don’t know about your library, but mine has an OK selection of audiobooks on Overdrive. I’d check there first before you think about buying and some Librovox readers are better than others and that would be free
Thanks! I read Anne Bogle’s post on “beginner’s guide to audio books” and my kids are listening to a book on one of the recommended links right now. :)
Mystie Winckler from Episode 14 has some great hacks for making the most of your Audible membership: https://amongstlovelythings.com/14/
This was fun! Thank you! Ringing in the new year talking books is PERFECT! :) I hope to check out the Magyk book series myself as I love children’s fantasy series.
Happy New Year, Sarah!
I’m new to the site and podcast — really loving both!
I have a general question I’d love to hear some perspective on from this wonderful community:
I’m living abroad right now, in central-eastern Europe, and I’ve been FLABBERGASTED to learn that many people here commonly doubt the benefits of children (themselves) reading aloud! A friend saw my Winter Read-Aloud Challenge calendar on our fridge the other day and remarked that she recently read an article about the harmful effects of reading aloud. Apparently, the theory goes that reading aloud weakens comprehension.
I’m pretty sure my jaw physically dropped when I heard this is actually DEBATABLE. I’m a 2nd-gen homeschooler (although our kids attend a local school currently, since we’re aiming for bilingualism), so I’ve got a long list of pro-reading aloud arguments in my arsenal. But is this REALLY a serious educational theory??
I’m researching a bit online, and I am more than a little freaked out! Not about to be persuaded, of course, just freaked out that I might have to defend my stance pretty often. Thoughts appreciated!
I would LOVE to see an article that talks about the harmful effects of reading aloud. I’m flabbergasted, as well. Send me links! I’m all ears! (send links to sarah@readaloudrevival.com, if you don’t mind)
The Babysitters club! I would read them so fast, that I would ride my bike to the book store to buy the next one with my own money. I’m from Louisville too! After entering some of these book groups, I have been embarrassed about mentioning that I read those voraciously. Even Andrew Pudewa talked down about them in a talk I saw. So I still had all of the books and let my oldest daughter start reading them, until I felt like I was doing her a disservice. :-) She reads such better books anyway, so she didn’t need to lower herself for those books.
I’m so excited to hear that y’all are reading The Wingfeather Saga! Even if you didn’t love the first book, I think you’ll love the series as a whole… and I sure hope so, because I would love to see an Author Event with Andrew Peterson or hear you interview him on the podcast! :) That series has become my all-time favorite, and I’m so glad we did it as a family read-aloud.
I’m not familiar with all these titles, but I was rather alarmed to see the SWEET VALLEY HIGH books. Before I was homeschooled, I attended public school up to 6th grade. This series–SWEET VALLEY HIGH– awakened my mind to impurity at a very tender age. I would never allow my kids to read these books.. Not judging anyone here—but I feel compelled to warn because I was pretty innocent before reading those books.
Also, many years ago I had heard of an exorcist in Rome warning parents to not allow kids to read Harry Potter. So I’ve stayed away from those completely.
Sarah, don’t worry about the reading aloud theory–people have read aloud for centuries: ) My dad was a busy father of 8, but made time to read aloud to us kids when he could. It did us lots of good. He’d read fun stuff, history, lives of the Saints, LIturgical Year by Dom Gueranger…all kinds of well rounded reading and all of us kids were blessed with that.
I thoroughly enjoyed this Podcast! I am a big fan of The Modern Miss Darcy Blog. It was fun to hear her Blog come to life in your Podcast. What a great idea to have a Podcast to help moms cultivate a reading life. All your podcasts are so inspiring! I haven’t listened to all of them yet, but each one has truly been a blessing.
About 6 years ago I thrifted over ONE HUNDRED of my Babysitters Club Books, all in the name of purging our home from twaddle. And I am soooooo annoyed at my past self for doing that. Gah! They were so 80s, and they held so many good memories. They were my original couldn’t-put-down books, too.
Sigh….
Great podcast! And oh my goodness…I think I must have read almost every single book in the Sweet Valley High series when I was a teen! LOL
We just finished reading The Wizard of Oz for our read-aloud. I’m participating in Anne’s 2016 Reading Challenge and The Mouse and the Motorcycle is on my list of books for me to read this year. :)
Both of you ladies mentioned loving Beverly Cleary’s books. In case you were not aware, Mrs. Cleary turns 100 years old on April 12th this year!!! woohoo! I think we are going to throw some sort of honorary birthday party for her at my house or at our library.
I really enjoyed this episode Sarah, thank you both!
Ahhhhhhh!!!! I didn’t know this! Thank you for the heads-up. Ideas are starting to go off like fireworks in my head. :)
I know, right?? I’m starting to pay more attention to the authors and illustrators behind the beautiful books we are reading. There are so many fantastic books written by individuals who have passed on before us. I feel blessed to have the treasures they left for us, and yet disappointed that we will never get to correspond with them or see them in person.
My son (2nd grade) has been writing to a handful of people over the past year. Children’s illustrator Richard Jesse Watson not only wrote back, but sent my son a packet of post-cards of his art work. (His work is amazing.) My son also wrote to Patricia Reeder Eubank, who sent him a signed copy of her book about Seaman, the Newfoundland who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition. (Her story, Seaman’s Journal, and her art work are absolutely adorable.)
Oh how I wish I was a kid so that I could write to my favorites and get fun surprises in the mail! Lol. Oh well. I’ll live vicariously through my children :o) I think that’s why homeschooling is so fun.
I just had to comment about “Dark Sea of Darkness” book I heard Modern Mrs. Darcy just couldn’t get into. Our family struggled too….until someone gave us the audio! British accent! Totally worth the read aloud – made the book a fun “read” for the whole family!
By the way – I thoroughly enjoy listening to your Read Aloud Podcast and it was great to “rediscover” Modern Mrs. Darcy! Keep up the good work – I am so thankful for you!
Does anyone know which audio version of Wind in the Willows they were discussing? I am looking for this for an upcoming trip, but I only see the link to the book, and audible has over a dozen different versions. Help!
I want to know too! :-)
I just saw that my library has a version by Jim Weiss. I wonder if that’s the one they were referring to? I just checked it out to give it a try.
I was checking the comments to find the answer to that, too! I really want to know which one it was. I’m sure you couldn’t go wrong with Jim Weiss, though.
She has a list of 40 favorite audio books for kids on her website, and the version with David Thorn is the one she lists.
http://modernmrsdarcy.com/40-favorite-audiobooks-kids/
Thanks so much for finding the answer! :)
Is the main character in Magyk really named Sebastian Flyte or was that an accidental reference to Brideshead Revisited? Either way, I love it!
Listening to the podcast now and wanted to hop over and comment about page count tracking. Goodreads keeps the number of books and the page count for the entire year for you. My son and I looked at ours a couple weeks ago and I was also floored as to how many pages he read in 2015. Anyway, goodreads is an easy way to keep track pages. 😀
Hello. The link for The Wind in the Willows seems generic and I was wondering if Anne ever got back to you with the specific audio version she loves! There are several out there and I want to get it right! Thanks!
Saw this answered above! Thanks!!
Thanks for this great interview.
When choosing the books at the end, I kept saying Redwall and when Anne mentioned it I was thrilled. Jacques had such a great way of weaving a tapestry. :)
Another good fantasy series but with a Spiritual twist is The Bell Mountain series by Lee Duigon.
I love the music introducing your postcast #37. Would you please share what/whom it is?
: )