The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction
Meghan Cox Gurdon has taken her personal and professional love of reading (she has been the Wall Street Journal’s children’s book reviewer since 2005) and written a thoughtful and inspiring book about the power of reading out loud to children—young and old—as well as the infirm and elderly. Part memoir (as Gurdon shares her family’s favorite read alouds at various points in her children’s maturity), part science of reading, The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction (2019) proves that reading out loud connects humans in a way that few things can. In the digital age of information, when we are so often distracted from the ones we hold most dear, that connection is paramount. Gurdon’s book is one which I have wanted someone to write for sometime, and I reveled in its pages.
Literacy, the science of reading, has always fascinated me (my mother specialized as a reading teacher when I was a kid), and I have read a handful of books that delve into the neuroscience of reading. None have been as pleasurable a read as Gurdon’s book, nor as inspiring. I pulled a long list of books I would like to read to my children (and to myself) from the pages of The Enchanted Hour. I also found myself getting the pep talk I needed to keep reading aloud to my seven-year-old daughter, even though she is now devouring chapter books independently.
The Enchanted Hour directly responds to the complicated reality that humans face in the age of digital media and technology. Her books cites the 2007 study (from University of Washington) that I often quoted when my daughters were babies (and I zealously insisted they not watch movies and shows) that showed the detrimental effects of screen time on very young children. She also discusses the effects on babies of their parents’ fascination with their own devices, a problem of increasing concern: “We know that technoference is a real issue for many children. It can be distressing to lose a parent’s attention to electronic interruption, and some kids misbehave because of it” (75). Reading aloud, even just a book or two a day, Gurdon argues, is an intimate experience that can help mend the wounds our technology-dependent lifestyles may inflict on our growing children. In addition to securing the bonds of love between adult and child, reading picture books aloud to young children increases their emotional vocabulary as they observe fictional characters experience a wide range of upsets and triumphs. Plus, young children feel safe when they snuggle up and listen to a story read aloud. But The Enchanted Hour goes far beyond touting the benefits of reading out loud to toddlers and preschool-aged children; Gurdon describes the myriad ways in which reading classic chapter books aloud with her own aging children has bonded her family more strongly together. Furthermore, listening to a story read aloud strengthens all of our ability to pay attention for a prolonged period (a skill that is rapidly become more difficult to hone in the digital age).
Gurdon’s book also responds to the challenges twenty-first-century lovers of classical literature face when reading things written at a different time, in the midst of different societal norms—times, for example, when empire, patriarchy and racial superiority were everyday givens. When discussing reading classical literature to children and adolescents these problematic themes often paralyze parents and educators as they seek to rid the canon of prejudice or censor individual works of certain offensive words and turns of phrase. This desire, while understandable, has always troubled me greatly. I see reading books like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series or Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer, as opportunities to have uncomfortable and challenging, but certainly meaningful, conversations about our history and the ways things have changed (and can continue to change). I have always thought that children deserve to hear the stories that formed the emotional and intellectual lives of their fore-bearers (as is age-appropriate). Gurdon shares the story of Thomas Bowdler, a Victorian who took it upon himself to censor the works of Shakespeare of baudy reference so as to make his plays appropriate for Victorian families to share; she likens that well-intentioned (and from 2019’s perspective, prudish and foolish) desire to cleanse the classics of troubling elements to the modern-day desire to cleanse classics of the portions we today find troubling. Gurdon poetically writes, children are “the newest braids in that cord of humanity, and it is right and beautiful that they should know something of what their parents and grandparents value, while at the same time having access to the classic works of human imagination that we all own in common” (158). She concludes this section of The Enchanted Hour with words I found myself wanting to stand and applaud:
We do children no service in cutting them off from transcendent works of the imagination, even if it means introducing them to troublesome ideas and assumptions, and to characters we would rather they not admire. Like life itself, literature is unruly. It raises moral, cultural, and philosophical questions. Well, where better to talk about these things than at home? The human story is messy and imperfect. It is full of color and peril, creation and destruction—of cruelty and villainy, prejudice and hatred, love and comedy, sacrifice and virtue. We needn’t be afraid of it. It’s foolish to cover it up and pretend history never happened. It is far better to talk about what we think of these matters with our children, using books as a starting point for the conversation (172).
Reading aloud connects people who share that day’s reading with people and ideas who have come before and helped shape the society in which we live today. There is tremendous power, both for the individual intellects of those sharing that day’s reading, and for society as a whole, in continuing to share those stories.
Her penultimate chapter deals with the healing salve of reading out loud to adults who are ill or elderly. “For adults, literature shared by the voice becomes an opportunity for encounter, companionship, and self-discovery. It’s a balm for the lonely heart and a means of escape from surroundings and confinements that may be as much mental as physical. It offers connectedness both in the moment and, in a deep way, with the full richness of human experience” (191). I found this chapter both moving and inspirational, and one I think many of us ought remember as we watch the Great Generation fade into history and the Boomers approach old age.
Gurdon leaves her readers with a bit of a pep talk about starting to read out loud, regardless of the age of their family members or their previous failures to engage in reading aloud. She urges us all to stash our devices out of sight (and hearing) in order to “[g]ive everyone the psychic space to engage with the words and story, and with each other” (198). The simple act of reading together, letting a human voice fill a room with story, offers all of us the opportunity to connect, grow and slow down in a world which seems constantly in motion. The Enchanted Hour delightfully reminds its readers of this simple pleasure that can make our families, our children, our ill and our aging experience life more fully and with more joy.
A Few Great Passages:
“A miraculous alchemy takes place when one person reads to another, one that converts the ordinary stuff of life—a book, a voice, a place to sit, and a bit of time—into astonishing fuel for the heart, the mind, and the imagination” (xiii).
“Reading aloud is not just a pleasant way to enjoy a story. It is a powerful counterweight to the pull of cultural and industrial forces that with stunning rapidity are reshaping infancy and childhood” (14).
“The story of humankind is that story of the human voice, telling stories. In reading aloud, we draw from an ancient wellspring of happiness that predates the written word. Oral storytelling has sustained and refreshed humankind since the far-off days of the ancient past” (20).
“Homer could not have anticipated our tech devices, but he captures their lotus-like allure. He also shows us a way out. If we are wise, we will drag ourselves and our families, wailing if necessary, to ships that wait to sail on what literary historian Maria Tatar calls ‘oceans of stories.’ If we can ease off the lotus-eating, just for a little, we can clear our heads and return to a different kind of home. Humankind has flourished with the sharing of stories from its earliest days. In reviving the art of reading aloud, we can reclaim an old pleasure, one that has an amazing capacity to draw us closer to one another” (39).
“The act of reading together secures people to one another, creating order and connection, as if we were quilt squares tacked together with threads made of stories” (47).
“Words are the raw materials of the ‘language arts,’ that stale phrase from elementary school that no more than hints at the emotional dynamism and potential for beauty we can unlock through near-infinite combinations of words. Language is an art form, if not always expressed in ways that exhilarate. It is also democratic and universal: anyone can dabble and there are no expensive paints or canvases to buy” (95).
“The books and artwork of the world are, after all, the inherited property of every child. They are the natural estate of every boy and girl from the moment he or she draws breath. Nursey rhymes, fairy tales, legends, myths, poetry, paintings, sculptures, the great body of classic literature, the bounty of new and forthcoming literature, whether for children or adults—all these things belong to the young and ignorant just as much as they do to the old and erudite” (148-149).
“With any luck, our children will come to appreciate that the people of generations past were as full of life, intelligence, wisdom, and promise as they are, and impelled by the same half-understood desires and impulses; that those departed souls were as good and bad and indifferent as people who walk the earth today. Those who came before us wrote stories and songs, built roads and bridges, invented and created and argued and fought and sacrificed for all sorts of causes. Do we not owe them a debt of gratitude? We wouldn’t be here without them” (150).
“‘You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened one hundred years ago to Dostoyevsky,’ James Baldwin once reflected. ‘This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important’” (191).
“We live in a time of immense complexity, dizzying and dazzling sophistication that would seem to make a mockery of simpler ways and things. Yet there is magic in simplicity” (218).
Bibliography:
Gurdon, Meghan Cox. The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction. HarperCollins, 2019.
