I love reading to Alice, and I keep thinking I should stop soon, but instead, I switched it to us reading to each other aloud. She was a slow starter with books, just didn't like reading . She didn't learn till about 6 years old, and it worried me a lot, but I kept on reading to her all along. About the time series books became the rage at 8 years she really got into it on her own. I was concerned this last couple of years at the literature they were picking for themselves - all warrior stuff and killing - like The Hunger Games and something called Warrior Cats, and this way I can kind of back track to more innocent forms of literature, and control what she learns about, or at least augment it with some good literature in small doses. She has finally relaxed and let me pick every other book without balking, because she has liked all the books I picked. Earlier this year, we were on a Zilpha Keatley Snyder kick, a woman who writes specifically for pre-teens, who was around when I was in school. That cemented our connection, and now I can suggest almost anything. I'm thinking the Robin Hood tales might be another choice for us, since she liked the King Arthur legends.
As for reading aloud, I learned in college that this is a great way to learn, my theatre friends and I tried this with Shakespeare plays - reading aloud, then asking questions when we didn't understand something. We did it on our own, formed a little study group for fun, not for classes. The three of us just sat and picked out several characters each to read and plowed through. It was great, when you read aloud, it brings things up you would normally gloss over if reading to yourself, and you have to answer the question, or figure out the word you don't understand. You remember the answers better too. Of course there were some things we never did 'get' but the process of putting several minds at the problem really worked.
