World Read Aloud Day – February 3, 2021

World Read Aloud Day is February 3, 2021. In the meantime, every day can be read aloud day in your own home!

Why is reading aloud important? A 2015 study (PDF) found that children are exposed to a larger vocabulary from picture books read aloud than from conversations with adults. This is because we tend to speak with the same 5000 most popular words; while books — even picture books — are more likely to use words outside that popular 5000. Sometimes reading aloud can be easier said than done, but we have some resources to make it easier – even on the difficult days.

How will You Celebrate World Read Aloud Day?

Gianna thinks of family reading time as a way to Go on a Family Adventure Without Leaving Your House. She offers some of her favorite ways to make reading time fun for the whole family.

World Read Aloud Day Activities

LitWorld, the creators of World Read Aloud Day offer free resources with activity ideas, tips for reading aloud and resources for more information. This includes a one-page PDF for families with tips and ideas for celebrating at home. Ideas include:

• Hosting a “Read Aloud Night” with family and friends. This would be a great excuse to skype with the cousins! Brave families could bring their own poetry, essays or short stories to share.
• Posting pictures on social media of your family reading your favorite books. Definitely tag #WorldReadAloudDay, but we would love it if you would tag us to, so we can see all your great pictures!
• Becoming a Volunteer Reader. While the Minnesota Humane Society is still mainly closed to the public (you can make an appointment to adopt), when things begin to open up again, kids can become Rescue Readers.
•  Suggestions of how to choose what to read aloud. It doesn’t have to be books.
• Tips for reading aloud at home.

World Read Aloud Day Bookmarks

Another fun idea to celebrate is to print out WRAD’s bookmarks prior to February 3rd and then distribute them to friends and family – like Valentines but with books!

Let Someone Else Read Aloud:

If you would rather have someone else read aloud, Anne has collected a list of story times around the Twin Cities. Most of these locations are not offering in person story times yet, but many offer virtual story times. You can find these on our calendar.  We have also had great luck searching YouTube and Spotify by specific book title.

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Find Local Children’s Book Authors in our Directory

Since last year, we have begun building a resource that we are incredibly excited and proud to share. Introducing, the Bookhounds Author Directory! Here is where we will share up-to-date information on all our favorite authors. Over the coming year, we will be moving the majority of our author information, interviews and reviews into their individual directory posts so that our readers can find parental reviews, author bios and tidbits, and links to purchase books all in one place.

I do warn you that our homes are overflowing with books since we started collecting children’s books by local authors, but it is a fun and addictive hobby and, like we shared in the first paragraph, we are exposing our kids to so much vocabulary!

Good Books to Read on World Read Aloud Day

We are so blessed in Minnesota to have a wonderful community of local Children’s book authors. We have had the privilege to both review some of their books and to interview the authors. Here are some of our favorite reviews and interviews:

• Punk Skunks by Trisha Speed Shaskan and Stephen Shaskan
• A Dog is a Dog by Stephen Shaskan
• The Ella and Penguin Books by Megan Maynor
• How Martha Saved Her Parents From Green Beans by David LaRochelle
• BookHounds Invites: David LaRochelle, Celebrating Parents, Kids and Books
• This is NOT a Cat by David LaRochelle and Illustrated by Mike Wohnoutka
• North Woods Girl  Aimee Bissonette
• Bonus BookHounds – Interview with Aimee Bissonette
• D’aulaires Book of Norwegian Folktales by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire
• One North Star by Phyllis Root
• Bel the Weather Girl by Belinda Jensen
• FFTC BookHounds Invites Illustrator Nina Crittenden
• Interview with Lynne Jonell, Author of the Emmy Books
• The Quirks and Puppy Pirates series by Erin Soderberg
• BookHounds Invites Rick Chrustowski in ‘The Case of Habitats & Homes’
• BookHounds Invites Stephanie Watson (Author of the Elvis & Olive books)
• Behold! A Baby by Stephanie Watson
• BookHounds Invites Molly Beth Griffin
• BookHounds Invites: Mary Casanova, Multigenre Author for Young Readers
• BookHounds Invites John Coy, Author of ‘Their Great Gift’

How to Tackle the Dreaded 20 Minutes of Daily Reading

I honestly don’t know why making reading an assignment instantly makes it harder to do, but it does. So we’ve developed some ways to get the homework assignment of 20 Minutes of Reading done daily, so we can go back to reading for the pure enjoyment of it.

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