A Little, Aloud
Making A Little, Aloud
by Angela Macmillan
Over the past three years I have read hundreds and hundreds of short stories in the search for the right weekly story for my read aloud reading groups with the elderly in residential homes and day centres. My bookshelves groan with the weight of second hand collections and anthologies and strange old books with titles like The Bedside Book; Round the Fireside; The Weekend Book and Thanks For Listening. Sometimes we read extracts from novels: Silas Marner, Robinson Crusoe, Andrea Levy’ s Small Island or The Road to Nabb End. Whatever the piece, it has to last no longer than 20 minutes or it becomes too much for powers of concentration that are not perhaps what they once were.
The subject matter and length of the literature I choose for my groups must take these real difficulties into account without making concessions to excellence of content. We believe in the power of great writing to enrich minds. Each week the group members make the effort and it is an effort, to get themselves to our reading room and each week we read together, think together, laugh and sometimes feel sad together. It is simple, it’ s fun; it’ s social and it’ s intellectually stimulating. Why don’t all care homes have reading groups? Probably because finding the right material is difficult and time consuming. Supposing, I thought, I collect together some of the most successful stories and poems into an anthology so that carers, friends and relations can have a real resource for reading aloud, either to small groups or simply one-to-one.
Meanwhile, at Chatto & Windus a new publishing manager had just taken up position. Two years previously she had read The Reading Cure: Blake Morrison’ s account for the Guardian of the work of Get Into Reading and had stored it away in her mind as something interesting to be investigated at a later time. That time arrived as she sat on a London underground train reading through my book proposal. And Reader… the lady, she say YES.
Accompanied by the boss and communications manager, I travelled to London at the end of January 2010 for a meeting at Random House. In the smooth, stylish foyer we signed the visitors book beneath a signature, large and elegant. Nigella.
“We’d like to publish in September”, they said as we sat in front of a desk that had once belonged to Virginia Woolf at Hogarth Press.
“Fine” we said, beaming.
“Which means we need completion in April.”
“ Fine”, we said, showing no fear.
And so it began: the contracts, the collecting of material, the lists, documents and the writing not to mention the entry into the world of copyright. A strange, incomprehensible world of a million paths with no signposts; roundabouts with no exits and dead end streets.
Chatto suggested we aim for a market beyond the care home on the basis that the literature is good for everyone so I added a subtitle: An anthology of poetry and prose for reading aloud to someone you care for.
And now in October 2010 we have the beautiful finished anthology of stories and poems which has a foreward by our patron Blake Morrison and an introduction by the director of The Reader Organisation, Jane Davis and it is out there in the world for you to read to someone you care for. We hope you will find the experience of shared reading,to
be a real pleasure or as Wordsworth puts it in one of our poems, ‘joy it was for her, and
joy for me!’
(You can read Angela’s full account of ‘Making A Little, Aloud’ in The Reader 39)
“A Little, Aloud is wonderful – a luscious, challenging enticement to read and hear and share the love of doing both.” Howard Jacobson
“Reading aloud is an activity that everyone can take part in. It sharpens the intellect, invigorates the imagination and enlarges the scope of human sympathy. If we all read aloud every day, the world would be a better place.” Philip Pullman
“Being read to is the beguiling beginning of learning to love reading – it opens the door to absolutely everything and anything we might want to do in life.” Joanna Trollope
“Reading aloud is pleasure. Pure pleasure.” Stephen Fry
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