Hello, hello, welcome to the Read Aloud Revival podcast.

This is the show that helps you make meaningful and lasting connections

with your kids through books. I'm your host, Sarah McKenzie. I'm the author of Teaching from Rest,

the Read Aloud family, and I'm a mother of six. I'm so glad you're here for this episode because

not all of our kids become voracious readers on their own. And in fact, if your child is a developing

reader, a child who hasn't yet gained fluency, reading is probably pretty far down the list of

things he or she would like to do with their time, right? It's really helpful, I think, to remember

that early days of learning to read are really difficult. Reading still isn't easy. It's not

enjoyable for a child who has to sound out every third or fourth word. It's exhausting, right? So it's

no wonder they don't love it. On today's episode, we're going to

talk about strategies to help hook your developing reader. And then, of course, I'll give you

some book suggestions that they might just find too good to pass up. I have some good book

list for you. So let's talk about developing readers. And these are readers who haven't yet gained

fluency and ease in their reading. You know, reading is still hard work, whether they're

sounding out words or they just are needing somebody to sit right next to them while they're

getting through that

sticky word, trying to figure out each sentence as it comes. It's just taking a lot of their

energy and mental energy. These are developing readers. Really, any reader who finds reading to be

hard work, they might not even need your help sounding out the words, but it just takes a lot of

their mental

energy and stamina to do the reading. I think it's worth taking some time to talk about this,

because I'm pretty sure that as much as all of us want our kids to love reading, and I'm

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