Reading Out Loud Creates a Lyrical Memorable Bond
READING OUT LOUD CREATES A LYRICAL MEMORABLE BOND
The earliest memories I have of my grandmother are of her reading to me. I remember sitting beside her and turning the pages as she read some of my favorite stories to me. Her tone would go up for squeaky voices and down for deep ones. I’d giggle, and she would, too. Being at her house was my favorite place to be when I was little. Those moments of listening to her read to me created not only a strong bond between the two of us, but also a bond between me and the written word and the sounds of those words spoken aloud.
I grew up loving to read books to myself and out loud. I began reading my very first books out loud to my mother and my grandmother. And then, I was off on great new adventures by myself sharing the coolest bits with anyone who would listen. I dabbled along in creative writing shyly sharing lines for a taste of feedback. As a new wife, I read to my husband on long car trips visiting family and vacationing. He also contributed to the creatively-voiced dabbles.
Later with our son, I read from North Carolina to Washington, DC to Disney in Florida, and all along the Mississippi River on our two-week greatest-of-all-time family adventure. We shared the stories together of Tom Sawyer after having visited the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri. We read snippets about ten states and the Great River. We read about the ecology and conservation of the Great Mississippi River and about the people who have called her banks, home. We imagined how their lives changed and adapted as the river ebbed and flowed. Oh what momentous family memories these moments created.
In 2023 over the course of a month in the car tootling along on errands and day trips and Sunday drives, I read aloud The Triumph of Seeds by Thor Hanson, a rare combination of scientist and storyteller. Some might consider this work a gardening guide or even a history volume, but for us it became a book about a very large family, The Seeds. The Seeds have so many members we didn’t even realize were in the family or that we never considered or ever even heard about. For that short month, we became absorbed in the seeds consuming our everyday lives and in some so valuable, they’re held in a bank.
As a VoiceOver Talent and Audiobook Narrator, I’ve seen my strong read aloud skills become a sure asset to my work. As I practice and train, I continue to read aloud, now more often to myself. As I discover and test out scripts using new voices within, I am reminded of a lifetime of adventures that make my voice, mine, in all its various forms. The relationships built and strengthened through the bond of reading out loud together are priceless. And the memories created, unforgettable. So, too, is the bond created between me and my craft.
