Reading with Gordon.
Roscoe Orman is best known as Gordon on TV’s “Sesame Street.” But now he has teamed up with as the site’s “chief storyteller” to promote audiobooks as a way to get kids into reading.
Orman offers some tips for enjoying audiobooks with your kids:
• Help your children find the best setting to minimize distractions. This depends on the child. For some, it’s a quiet room; others may need to move around.
• Listen in pairs or groups, a proven method for engaging kids in a book.
• To help your children comprehend the characters, the main ideas, the plot and moral, let them listen to the book while they read along.
• To check if it’s sinking in, ask them to summarize a part of the book that they have listened to.
• Stop the audio, ask a question and encourage your child to share his or her thoughts and feelings about the story.
• Help younger children analyze a book by asking simple questions, such as “what was your favorite part of the story?” Encourage them to draw a picture, take a photo, or act out a scene or moment from the book. For older children, have them help you write a review of the book.
First
Lines
The Book of Unholy Mischief, by Elle Newmark
My name is Luciano — just Luciano. I’m Venetian by birth, old now and chained to my memories, compelled to return, link by link, seeking clarity.
There’s a matter about which I am sworn to secrecy, but times have changed since I took my oath. In my lifetime, I’ve witnessed man’s emergence from centuries of darkness. Great thinkers have unlocked our minds, and great artists have opened our eyes and hearts. Some are calling it a renaissance — a rebirth — and it will reverberate far into the future because of a miraculous new invention called the printing press. Perhaps, now, it would be a disservice to the advancement of knowledge to remain silent. Perhaps the pendulum has swung a full arc, and the time has come for me to speak. If I proceed with caution . . . well, those who have ears, let them hear.
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