Saturday, October 1, 2011

My All Time, Hands Down, Favorite Read Aloud

From Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the Fantastic Mr. Fox, all of Roald Dahl's books make for fantastic read alouds! His playful use of language does such a wonderful job illustrating for the imagination his other worlds and alternate realities. The broken, uneven, yet profound, poetic and silly bumblings of the BFG are so much fun to read aloud, it is a shame to read them only in your head. They literally seem to tickle the tongue.

“A whizzpopper!" cried the BFG, beaming at her. "Us giants is making whizzpoppers all the time! Whizzpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our ears! You surely is not telling me that a little whizzpopping if forbidden among human beans?”  from the BFG.

The Witches, however, is by far, hands down, my favorite read aloud book of all time! The way Dahl captures  the Grand High Witch's Bavarian accent through spelling phonetically & tweaking the words make for the ultimate story telling experience. Even for me a rather conservative, self conscious reader I am easily able to loose myself in the characters. It is clear this author intended it to be shared this way. His clever description of how to detect a witch has the students on the edges of their seat and you can feel them start to closely observe you, the reader, for signs that you may be one. A master at bringing the reader and audience into the fold, Dahl makes the two dimensional text pop out at you.

What is your favorite read aloud?