The joy of reading aloud to a child surely springs from their absorption and responsiveness which we, the adults, can clearly see.
When I began to write stories for my numerous small relatives, I first thought, following the current practice, that pictures were essential, but soon found my own attempts to draw so woeful that I abandoned them. They could do better!
As I read, I noticed that, after a few moments of peering up at my face, the child’s gaze shifted slightly sideways, looking as it were into the middle distance, a sign that the panorama was unfolding before their eyes.
Later, this was confirmed, for example, on a walk in a meadow: “Shhh, quiet!” exclaimed my niece, “Can you see her? Dilly’s here – look!” On another occasion, my grandson stopped me beside a fallen log in the wood: “Oh look, that’s the little dog’s moon boat!”
I was surprised to find how much these young children enjoyed jeopardy: the chapters they most often asked to be read again were those with an element of peril.
Another unexpected discovery was the length and reach of the child’s attentiveness. My stories are about thirty thousand words each, divided into shorter chapters, to allow for development of plot and character, while sentence structure and range of vocabulary exceeded what I had assumed possible.
Children like a mix of humour and wonder, everyday life and magic.