Listening to books being read has been a critical part of my literacy narrative. From my parents reading picture books to me, to enjoying audiobooks as an adult, being read to has been a staple in my enjoyment of the world of literature. I even spent a number of years in early middle school listening to the Harry Potter books on tape, as they help to rid me of the night terrors I dealt with at the time. The activity has a certain level of comfort to it that I believe many of us that have grown up with this shared experience might identify with.

I have also found that I get a great deal of pleasure from reading aloud to other people. I believe this stems from the time my brother read The Hobbit to me. While I am sure it was not the first time a book had been read to me, it was one of the first times that someone had read me a story of such length and maturity. My brother, a high schooler at the time, would offer to read to me after dinner, before I went to bed. We would climb the steps to the top floor of our house, where he had annexed himself out of what I can only imagine was teenage angst and a desire to be left alone, and sit on the floor of his room where he would crack open an old copy of the text. I still have that same copy of the book somewhere—battered and dog eared, the binding coming loose and a piece of construction paper wrapped around it as a replacement for its long lost cover.

I suspect that his stint in the theater department at his high school played a role in his desires, but that experience remains one of my cherished memories of our brotherhood. He gave each of the characters a unique voice, inflecting as that would, coming to life through his words. Though I knew the story from the animated movie, listening to the book was somehow so much more enchanting. My mother would go on to read me the first three Harry Potter books, but reading The Hobbit with my brother was one of the more memorable literacy events of my life.