An ill-matched narrator can ruin an otherwise rollicking book. But a good one can bring stories to life \u2013 and evoke our earliest childhood memories<\/p>\n
Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email<\/a><\/p>\n My earliest memory of being read to as a child involves my father gleefully reading AA Milne while stretched out on my little bed, his shoes disappearing over the edge. His enthusiasm was infectious. I still know the poem Happiness by heart: \u201cJohn had great big waterproof boots on \u2026\u201d Milne\u2019s collection When We Were Very Young marked the beginning of my reading journey and has a place on my bookshelf to this day.<\/p>\n I passed on my love of literature to my daughter, who, like me, took over her own reading duties from a young age. My sons were more reluctant but loved being read to well into their teens. Harry Potter on cassette \u2013 and Stephen Fry\u2019s narration \u2013 saved us from murdering each other on many a long road trip, although homicide was a distinct possibility the year I accidentally bought the Jim Dale version.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An ill-matched narrator can ruin an otherwise rollicking book. But a good one can bring stories to life \u2013 and evoke our earliest childhood memories Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email My earliest memory of being read to as a child involves my father gleefully reading AA Milne while stretched out on my little … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}