Through my work with Literacy Volunteers, we’re using picture books for a double way to engage young English as a second language parents. They would use the picture books as textbooks, but we would model the way they could use them with their children and they would bring them home each week and by the end of the 12-week session, they had a lovely little library of books.
And on my walk one day, where I get my good ideas, I thought, “Why couldn’t I write a book that was especially designed for this?” They were reading every other line that way we were reading lines and use rhythm rhyme, repetition, all these kinds of things and have the two voices in different colors and sometimes have them read together with a third color. That’s compressing it because a lot of people contributed ideas to this. But the original idea and the original title that came into my head, You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You, I knew that was a bright idea.
