3 kids + 1 good book = great road trip

For this family, choosing a book to read aloud in the car is essential.

By Nancy Lowell George

from the March 3, 2008 edition

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My motives for starting our family's tradition of reading in the car were purely selfish: I could not bear the thought of listening to "A Sesame Street Christmas" for another 10 hours. My children had latched onto this cassette on our previous summer's road trip, and Oscar the Grouch's rendition of "I Hate Christmas" ran through my mind for days afterward.

As I began to gather toys and trinkets to entertain my three young children on our next 500-mile car trip, I came across a book I had purchased but never opened, Jim Trelease's "The Read Aloud Handbook." Before long, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, engrossed in his book and assertion that reading aloud doesn't need to end with picture books and that very young children will listen to chapter books.

This could be the answer to my problem, I thought. Dubious but desperate, I tucked a paperback copy of Roald Dahl's "James and the Giant Peach" into my trip entertainment bag. Mr. Trelease calls Dahl's classic his favorite read-aloud book. We had barely cleared the city limits when whining set in. I opened the paperback and began to read aloud the tale of the orphaned boy who escapes his wicked aunts by hiding inside a giant peach.

My 2-year-old, 5-year-old, and 7-year-old squirmed and wrestled in their seats, but soon they settled into the rhythm of the words and began to listen.

My extended family lives 489 miles away, and our favorite vacation spot is about 700 miles from our home. We soon learned that the simple pleasure of listening to a well-written book makes the long miles pass more quickly.

For my family, selecting a book to read aloud is now as important a part of preparing for a road trip as packing the cooler. We read Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie" while traveling through Missouri and Iowa on the way to a family reunion. Some of us were glad to be traveling in an air-conditioned car and others wished for the adventure of traveling by covered wagon surrounded by tallgrass prairie.

While engrossed in Gary Paulsen's "Canyon," the story of a troubled teenage boy who discovers an ancient Indian skull on a camping trip, we became lost in the New Mexico desert. And we weren't so quick to brush away spider webs after reading about the unlikely friendship of Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the spider in E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web."

Sometimes the books we read became highlights of the trip. I read Wilson Rawls's "Summer of the Monkeys" as we spent two days driving to the beach. We arrived just behind the power crews restoring electricity after a tropical storm. The rain lingered most of the week, and the beach was covered with oily tar washed up by the storm.

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