mrr design

image: Maira Kalman, Elements of Style

Despite the snow, I was able to attend a fascinating lecture on Tuesday night.

Subject: Lincoln

Presented by Lincoln biographer: Ronald C. White, Jr.

A few interesting tidbits:

Lincoln had a great ear for poetry 

and a great ear for words.

For him, words equaled actions.

An important part of his writing and revision process 

was to read his speeches aloud, very slowly.

He also wrote regularly on small scraps of paper

 and tucked the scraps here, there and everywhere,

 in places like his hat, or a book or the pigeon hole in his desk. 

Children read aloud regularly in school until the 1920's.

So why don't they read aloud in school now?

Every parent is encouraged to read aloud to their children.

Just the other day, I read a letter from a writer to an aspiring writer:

here are the recommendations:

"write as much as possible, in as many ways as possible.

When your write, read it aloud before you submit it."

Just like Lincoln

and many other great writers before him.

I read to my daughter every night for years starting when she was a baby.

 We began with the Mother Goose rhymes.

a few pages a night at bedtime,

going through the whole book, then starting again.

Gradually, we moved on to Good Night Moon

and other picture books - 3 per night until the stories were too long - 

then we opted for just one per night or maybe two.

Our final read aloud book was the first Harry Potter.

When I got laryngitis and had to stop reading aloud for a day or two

miss is decided to finish on her own and hasn't stopped reading since.