Mom’s the word: Bonding through books
Gill Deacon and Heather O’Neill connected with their kids through reading
When Reg Gordon, 18, looks back on his childhood, he thinks about the nightly ritual of his mother reading Harry Potter to him and his brothers. The four of them would pile into bed and his mom — author, CBC broadcaster and former Canada Reads host Gill Deacon — would orate a chapter from the beloved series, performing accents for each character. “I got to experience from a young age the power of books,” Gordon says. “I learned pretty early on how much I loved reading and storytelling, and everything about getting lost in a book.”
The Harry Potter sessions were equally special to his mom. “It was my favourite, magical time,” Deacon says. “I felt like no matter what was messy or chaotic or didn’t go smoothly though the rest of the day, after everyone had their bath and their pyjamas and climbed into bed for Harry Potter, all was well in the world.” Deacon — whom I got to know working at CBC Radio — recalls her own mother taking her to the library as a girl, checking out her favourite book, Wanda Gag’s Gone is Gone. Deacon still shares titles with her mother, who’s in her 80s. And she still shares a love of reading with her sons.
Just last summer, the boys were excited to hear that J.K. Rowling had a new book out. “My kids were 13, 15 and 18,” Deacon says with a laugh. “They listen to rap music. They shave. They have their own lives and teenage worlds. And even then, I said, ‘Guys, there’s a new Harry Potter book,’ and we sat all four of us and tried to rekindle the magic.”
Arizona O’Neill, 22, shares a similar books-based bond with her mother, acclaimed novelist Heather O’Neill.
“Reading is the biggest deal in my house,” says Arizona, a filmmaker who works in a bookstore.
Growing up, her mother read to her constantly, well into her teens.
“It was the time my mom and I spent the most together,” she says. “She was young, she had a lot of friends. But this was one thing that only we did together. I really enjoyed that. “We didn’t have much money when I was growing up,” she adds. “But if I wanted a book my mom would always get it for me.”
Reading helped Arizona feel a sense of belonging with peers, many of whom came from more traditional, middle- class nuclear families. “When you grow up with a single mom in NDG (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce) . . . it really connects you to the rest of the world . . . You go to school and all the kids are reading that book, and you get to talk to them about it, and it doesn’t really matter what kind of background you come from. Books are for everyone.”
Heather O’Neill, too, understands the power of books to transcend social boundaries. She grew up working-class, and nobody in her family read. When she became an avid bookworm, her father, a janitor, gave her two dollars every time she read a novel by Charles Dickens, the only author he was familiar with. “(Reading) seemed so whimsical and strange to him,” she says, “and opened up all these possibilities of what I could achieve.”
Indeed, reading paved the way for her to become one of the country’s most celebrated authors. “It completely allowed me to cross the class divide. Whenever I look back on what it was — how it was possible that I did this huge intellectual leap from where I grew up to where I am now — it was just this constant reading. I wasn’t exposed any sort of upper-class culture, but I had it in books.”
Heather passed this on to her daughter, whom she had at 20. The pair read aloud all the time, even on the Metro. They plowed through stacks of books and took pilgrimages to the famous Strand bookstore in New York. They continue to read together these days; their mother-daughter book club has included Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
“Reading allows one to think more deeply and unusually about everything,” Heather says. “(It) teaches one to think about not just what is in front of you, but all its inherent possibilities and paths, and its subtext. It just makes the world a much, much richer place.”
Lifelong readers intuit this. And many instinctive rewards of reading are supported by research.
“We know that there is a warmth, a feeling of connection, that comes from reading together, and that very young children biologically need those moments,” says Lisa Guernsey, Deputy Director of the Education Policy Program at the New America think tank. “These warm, positive interactions are the foundation of child well-being, and of children’s learning.”
Studies have shown that helping young children develop language and literacy skills can contribute to closing the achievement gap between disadvantaged and middle-class kids. And children who have participated in early literacy programs (before age 5) are more likely to finish high school and less likely to be incarcerated.
Much of the research points to a simple truth: when you read to children on a regular basis — generating warmth and conversation — it serves them for years.
“The thing that’s beautiful about that finding is that it does not mean parents have to go out and buy hundreds of dollars of software and computers . . . or have some sort of special parenting class. They simply have to realize that they have the power within them: this power of telling stories.”
Guernsey began writing about this topic when her daughters were in diapers, and has read to the girls all their lives. “The moments that I have with my kids reading are some of the best moments that we have together,” she says. “Now my kids are teenagers, and we still have moments where we are looking over each other’s shoulders, reading together, or on the couch passing a newspaper back and forth and laughing over something . . . It’s really something I treasure.”
Helping young children develop language and literacy skills can help close the achievement gap between disadvantaged and middle-class children