“When you read to us, grandma, it’s better than a movie.” No, I didn’t plant those words in my 10-year-old granddaughter’s mouth! She really said them. And that makes me smile broadly as I sit here in the Newark airport, filling part of a four-hour layover until my flight to Amsterdam by writing my thoughts to you.

Before I stepped waist-high into the world of educational renewal in 2009, I did not understand how important reading aloud to children actually was. In my day, the mantra, went something like this: “Adults should read to children until they begin reading more or less to themselves; then turn the kids loose.” Some will become avid readers; some will not. Either was okay, as life as a bibliophile was not meant for everyone.

I have almost no memory of my mother reading to me, which says something, since she was a passionate proponent of my education, standing over me (literally) at every juncture and raising the bar at every turn. Apparently, I went from the stage of needing an adult to read to me to the world of thirstily reading alone in one leap.

Following the pedagogical advice she heeded as a mom of a baby-boomer, daughter Carol was launched and needed no further tending in that arena. I still heeded that advice until rather late in the game. My husband tells me I did read a lot to Dennis and Helen. Now thoroughly grown-up kids, they also say that. But whatever I did read to them, it was ad hoc, without system and clear goals, and definitely without an understanding of the advantages unleashed by the act of reading aloud to others.

Well, that was then, and this is now. Many of you know the forces that brought me around to understanding better the potency of reading aloud. Some are professional colleagues whose “booths” at conventions lie across the row or at the other corner of the exhibit hall. Some are friends, particularly one special friend whose daily, systematic approach to reading aloud to her five children remains my model for my own grandchildren.

The other formative voice across the years since 2009 is one many of you love too: Jim Weiss. Instantly glued to his narrations on CDs, I realized the treasury I did not get as a child, or give to my own children. Through the extensive library he has created (his own dramatic arrangements, plus books by other authors), I gained much confidence insofar as my own reading aloud.

It’s not like I wasn’t aware of the techniques of theatrical declamation. My adult life has been spent largely teaching in an arts school, where drama students crisscrossed the same halls our music majors roamed. Attending fabulous theater performances at SMU required simply walking down the hall and descending a staircase.

But receiving lines from a stage is different from drinking them from the voice of an effective narrator whose every word is chosen with care and imbued with love, passion, and merriment. Weiss kicked open the door for me, friends and colleagues pointed the way (or dragged me through it), and here I am: thoroughly hooked on the efficacy of reading diligently, thoughtfully, and passionately to children.

Courtesy of these realizations across the last 15 years, I now know that few things are more valuable and formative, both for the grandkids and for me. It is if someone took a battery out of my mechanism, and I am just now operating at full force as I get it put back in.

So, for all of you who will be home tonight, or who are on the road, but have that reading light on in your car, campground, or hotel room, never doubt what you are doing. You are feeding these children just as vitally as when you make soup, casseroles, and salads. Nothing can replace the nourishment your reading aloud is bringing to their minds, hearts, and souls.

And if my mother were still alive, and able to partake in today’s renewal of time-tested, efficacious, traditional education, she would be drawing us onto the sofa that she so dearly loved, where she always sat reading library books for her own nourishment, and she would say, “Okay, shush now, all of you! I’m going to read.”