Librarians know Mem Fox for her delightful picture books, including Wombat Devine, The Magic Hat, and Time For Bed. But Fox is also an early literacy advocate, speaking and writing about the importance of reading aloud to children. In her book Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever she talks about the moment of her “epiphany”: her four-year-old daughter came home from Kindergarten after only two weeks in school and declared that she could read. She then proved it by reading a few random pages of her favorite book, Dr. Seuss’ The Foot Book. Astounded, Fox visited her daughter’s school the next morning to find out how this could have happened:
- “What did you do?” I asked, agog. “What method did you use? It’s a miracle!” “I didn’t do much,” she said. “How could I? She’s only been in my class for two weeks. You must have read to her often before she came to school.” “Of course,” I said. “Well, there you go,” said the teacher, as if that were that.
Fox’s tale of how she came to understand the importance of reading aloud to children is a brief but powerful story that could be shared with parents at an early literacy training to introduce the topic.