Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading.― Susan Sontag, author.
Preschoolers, who have been read to, know their favorite books. They want to hear them again and again. All parents who read to their children have been there. While readers may tire of the repetitiveness of rereading the same seemingly simple sounds again and again, the repetition benefits the child.
Educators claim numerous benefits for repetitive reading for children. Jodie Rodriguez, writing for Scholastic Magazine, cites the importance of repeating, reviewing and remembering for learning. “The more we engage with a story, the more we take away,” she write.
She adds, “developing a thirst for books, bonding as a family, getting to know a friend, filling in the gaps and building fluency” as additional reasons for both parents and children to read and reread the those treasured stories.
Everyone agrees that rereading is important for children. But what about adults? Some of us find pleasure in rereading books, too.
I approach each new book that comes my way with anticipation, but I frequently reread old ones, too. From the time I received my copy of Little Women, at age 11, I read it each summer until I was in college. Thereafter, I’ve reread it every few years. I, like so many young girls, loved this coming of age story. I found each reread very comforting and always entertaining.
Teaching, I reread each novel I taught each year. Thus, I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace and The Illiad 17 times. Since I added the memoirs: Anne Frank: A Diary of a Young Girl and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings during those 17 years, I haven’t reread them quite as often. I still read about any of these books whenever I come across new information. While my students couldn’t believe I reread each book each year, I knew it served me well. I always discovered a hidden gem that I had not seen before. Often, current events prompted new insight.
With retirement, something like watching the CBC/Netflix series “Anne with an E” prompts me to reread a book like Lucy Maud Montgomery’s semi-autobiographical Anne of Green Gables. Montgomery draws from her own experiences of growing up in her grandparents farmhouse with green gables to pen this classic series. Prince Edward Island credits this native author for the influx of visitors to the Canadian island. Her grandparents’ farm, so vividly depicted in the books, now serve as the Anne of Green Gables Center. Prince Edward Island is one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever visited in our travels.
Sara Jonsson, writing for Barnes and Nobles, list ten reasons why adults reread books. She begins, “they give us comfort. It’s the same reason we put on that worn-in pair of slippers everyday after work.”
Her other nine reasons include: the movie adaptation is coming out; escapism; age (we’re older); an upcoming test; disappointment in an author’s new book; acknowledgment that we missed the whole point with first read; family traditions; knowledge of book’s end and avoidance of talking to seat mate on plane.
English teacher/author Kira Walton, writing for “Read it Forward,” takes a different slant. She says, “Why reread? Because books change as we do.” She bases her article on her desire to reread three books, As I Lay Dying, Ethan Frome and Travels with My Aunt, that she had first read at age 15.
She writes, “I was stuck by the lines that had appealed to me back then and the ones that appealed to me now.”
The books had not changed. However, she acknowledges that she has changed; and with age and experience, she can now confirm an author’s wise words which had seemed so foreign when a teenager. She says, “At 25, I know exactly what the author is talking about.”
She concludes, “Such truths…only acquire their full significance once they’ve been relegated to the past…they are reserved for readers who have done a little living themselves.”
In the past few years, we’ve chanced to visit with real life friends we first met as young couples. Over the years, we’ve lived in different places so these friendships have been nurtured, for the most part, long distance. Yet after the hugs, we sit down to chat. Time and distance fades away; we realize why this friendship grew.
Rereading favorite books has a way to comfort and enrich our lives in much the same way a face to face visit with a dear old friend does.
2020
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