Read-alouds vs. Movies

I'm almost done reading The Silver Chair to Jaymie. She is prone to bad dreams when she sees scary, violent, or intense movies, and I was worried when we started that the book would be too disturbing for her. However, we finished reading the worst parts on Friday (when Prince Rilian kills the Lady of the Green Kirtle in the form of a giant green serpent), and although she was concerned that she might have bad dreams, she slept just fine that night.

Even though read-alouds and movies are similar in that they are both experienced somewhat passively, there is a difference between the two. Read-alouds engage the imagination more than movies. With a read-aloud, what the mind's eye sees is entirely up to the listener. Perhaps this is why Jaymie seems to handle scary read-alouds better than scary movies -- it could be that it is more difficult to imagine the action in a book subconsciously than it is to recall the images presented on a movie or TV screen.

In other read-aloud news, we didn't have lots of reading time this weekend due to various activities. As an alternative to our usual reading, I've started reading poems to the girls at night when we don't have much time to read. We're starting with selections from Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends