Ann Angel and Her Reading Team
October 2019

Rais­ing Star Read­ers is delight­ed to intro­duce a new Read­ing Team cen­tered around YA author and Wis­con­sin res­i­dent Ann Angel. Ann says: “One of my great­est plea­sures as a grand­par­ent is shar­ing a book with my grand­kids that was a favorite with my kids when they were grow­ing up. Anoth­er great plea­sure is see­ing my grown kids pull out a book they loved and read to it their chil­dren with the knowl­edge that they’re shar­ing a great love of sto­ry and reading.

“Recent­ly I wit­nessed my youngest daugh­ter Ste­vi read­ing The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar by Eric Car­le to her son Ted­dy. It’s a favorite of his, just as it was with Ste­vi. Ted­dy even has the book mem­o­rized. He delights in nam­ing the foods the cater­pil­lar gob­bles down, sug­gest­ing he can share an apple, or straw­ber­ry, or piece of choco­late cake with the cater­pil­lar. He groans when the cater­pil­lar wakes with a stom­achache and cheers for the love­ly but­ter­fly that emerges at the end.

“Watch­ing Ted­dy say the words along with his mom made me recall anoth­er favorite of all four of my kids. So I pur­chased copies of The Beren­stain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree by Stan and Jan Beren­stain as a first day of kinder­garten gift for Ted­dy and his cousins, Andrew and Emma. It didn’t take long for all three to rec­og­nize the rep­e­ti­tion of ‘Three lit­tle bears. One with a light. One with a stick. One with a rope.’ They love it when the bears lose their props and devel­op the shiv­ers. When my kids were grow­ing up, we wore out this par­tic­u­lar book as well as at least two audio cas­settes that includ­ed spooky sound effects.

“But the great­est shared expe­ri­ence we all have of this book is that, through­out high school, col­lege, and now as adults, my kids pull into the garage to our house and their homes and almost always repeat the final page of the book: ‘Home again. Safe at last.’

“That phrase has become a shared three-gen­er­a­tional expe­ri­ence now that Ted­dy, Andrew, and Emma have begun say­ing ‘Home again. Safe at last,’ when they reach their homes after a day of school or play­dates. Of course, we had to find the spooky old sound effects and dis­cov­ered a ver­sion of the cas­sette tape on YouTube. My entire fam­i­ly recent­ly lis­tened to this while rem­i­nisc­ing about oth­er books that are shared by our three generations.”

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Bookol­o­gy is always look­ing for new Read­ing Teams to help us cel­e­brate the joys of read­ing aloud togeth­er. Con­tact Lisa Bullard for fur­ther infor­ma­tion if you’re inter­est­ed in participating.