If you need a boost of sunshine in your week, stop whatever you’re doing and listen to this podcast. Why? Because in this episode, Australian icon Mem Fox joins me to talk about the unique gift this specific time can offer us — the chance to read together, to connect, and to help our kids fall in love with books on a whole new level.

Mem Fox is Australia’s most celebrated author and the creator of many too many pictures books to count.

She’s a giant advocate of reading aloud, as you’ll hear, and someone I’ve been dying to talk with. On today’s show, we’re talking about how and why reading to our kids will change their lives forever.

In this podcast episode, you’ll hear:

  • the magic that happens when kids and parents curl up to read together
  • what reading aloud does for parents too – especially right now!
  • and of course, Mem’s favorite books to read aloud

I’m also sharing the most encouraging thing I’ve read online in a long time (that happens at minute 1:13).


Click the play button below to start listening:


We talk about…

1:13 An uplifting message (don’t we all need one right about now?)
4:33Interrupted during reading aloud
7:14 On expectations
11:27Australia’s best-selling writer (yes, the whole continent!) Mem Fox
14:04Reading aloud: ‘ A lifeline of happiness’
17:14‘Laid-back, hang-loose, let’s have fun’
20:39The role of accents in phonics
24:18Bonding through Peter Pan
26:39Like driving a car …
29:11How to raise readers
29:50A ‘craze about birds’
31:32 Mem recommends …
34:48Reading essentials
36:24Remembering Tomie
39:10Let the Kids Speak

Quotes to remember:

“A laughing child likes learning.” – Mem’s father

“When the child was given these essentials: encouragement, time, books, magazines, light, silence, warmth in winter, and coolness in summer, and the comfort of being allowed to read in bed every night, the problem was solved.” – Mem Fox, Reading Magic


Books from this episode:

Some links are affiliate links

Peter Pan
Harriet, You’ll Drive Me Wild!
The Ramona Quimby Collection
The Henry Huggins Audio Collection
Time for Bed
Hattie and the Fox (Classic Board Books)
Reading Magic
Hello Baby!
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick
Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site
Whatever
I See, I See.
The Sibley Guide to Birds
Diary of a Wombat

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