Maisonette Muse
Emma Straub On The Magic Of Reading To Your Children
Emma Straub is the warm and witty novelist behind books like "Modern Lovers," "The Vacationers" and the forthcoming "All Adults Here." She’s also a mother of two and co-owner, along with her husband, of the beloved Brooklyn bookstore, Books Are Magic. Here, she talks about instilling a love of reading in your children, her favorite books for little ones, reading as a new mom and what she’s most excited to dive into this Fall.
- Interview By
- Liz McDaniel
Beyond your jobs as a novelist and bookstore owner, you are such a vocal champion of books and the act of reading. Can you tell me about your own evolution as a reader and a lover of books? Is there anything you can point to that your own parents did that laid this foundation?
Absolutely. So my dad is a novelist but in addition to his life as a writer, I think the most important thing about my dad is that I can count on maybe one hand the times in my life when I have ever seen him without a book. That includes coming over for Thanksgiving or going to the movies or out to dinner, whatever. He doesn’t read it or open it while we’re in the middle of a conversation but he always has one in his hand or very close to his person, just in case. And my mother worked in early childhood literacy for the last thirty years of her life so she is an equally as big inspiration in terms of me understanding the importance of books and, more than that, just seeing the pleasure of reading. When I was in high school, my mom and her book club read Proust, and then they went to France. They read the Russians and then they went to Russia. It’s extreme, perhaps, but books were always just the most important thing in my household growing up. And I think that as a parent, there are so many things to worry about and so many things to figure out how to do, and I certainly don’t claim to have done all of those things right, but the one thing I know I have done right is making sure that my children have access to books every single day and have since the day they were born.
As a bookstore owner and a parent trying to instill a love of books, both roles sort of challenge you to create a community around this thing—reading—that might otherwise be very solitary. You’re creating an experience around it and you’re clearly very good at it…is there anything you’ve learned along the way that you could share?
For me, it’s something that I get so much pleasure out of. That’s not to say that children always have good taste in books. If there’s a book that you, yourself, as a human find deadly boring or irritating, there’s no doubt that your child will want to read that one thirty times in a row on any given day, for sure, they will. I have read so many Little Golden Books over and over again and you’re just like, oh really, this is a novelization of a cartoon movie and it’s not even as good as that. Even so, it’s also cuddling time. It’s a time of physical closeness. I have two children and my older child is cuddly and always still, at six, still would rather be in my lap than anywhere else, but my younger child, who's three, isn’t such a cuddler. He’s wiggly and wiry and sort of all over the place, but when we read, he will cuddle. So I think, for me, that’s also part of it, having those sweet moments. It’s the most important part of our bedtime ritual.
How do you approach reading to children of two different ages?
We divide and conquer. What’s funny is that you might think you would read to the older one and the younger one would listen, but it’s actually the opposite. I will read picture books to my younger child and they share a room and sometimes I’ll stop to let my youngest finish the sentence because he knows all of these books by heart and my oldest will chime in, too, so I know that he’s listening and then often when I am finished reading he’ll say, “Can you bring me that book next?” so I bring it over to him. That’s the thing about children, of course. They’re always paying attention.
What are some of your favorite books for children? Do you have a formula you can point to that makes a book click for you?
I think with small children, when you’re reading out loud, rhyming is so important, especially if it’s something that you’re reading over and over again. And it’s something that I don’t think most adult readers think about in their daily life. If they think about rhyming they might think about terrible poetry or something but rhyme in children’s books can just make the experience so delicious. I am thinking about Julia Donaldson who wrote "The Gruffalo" and "Room On The Broom." I could read those books a hundred times a day and not get tired of them. Books like "Goodnight Moon" last for a reason and it’s because of the magic combination of the rhythm of these simple words and these pictures that you can dive into and explore and that you can see new things in every time you look. Children’s picture book illustrators are incredible and they are thinking so hard about what to include and they understand the pleasure of finding things. I am thinking of someone like Sophie Blackall, who wrote and illustrated "Hello Lighthouse," which won the Caldecott, but these intricate drawings that children can find new things in all the time. And then there’s just the absolute geniuses whose brains are on display on every page, someone like Carson Ellis who wrote and illustrated "Du Iz Tak?" and a book called "Home," both of which are perfect works of art, but "Du Iz Tak?" in particular is incredible because it’s written in a made up language—and there’s a lot of dialogue! There’s an elaborate plot that you understand just through the pictures and the dialogue of these characters and it doesn’t matter that it’s written in a made up language because you understand it perfectly, which is absolute magic. I bought a page of it, one of her drawings, and it’s hanging in my kitchen and I look at it everyday. So there are those humans. Maurice Sendak or someone like that when you’re just like, your brain was made to do this. Perfect genius is not just for grownups.
What about your actual reading approach? Do you do voices?
I’m not great at voices. But I am a good reader, you know, in part because I’ve had a lot of practice reading out loud. I love reading out loud, but my husband, he might not have the same transformative experience that I do every time I pick up a book with my children, I’m an extreme example, I understand, but he’s very good at voices. What’s also wonderful about reading books out loud is that you don’t have to stick to what’s on the page. If there’s one illustration that the child loves, you can stay there, you can linger. You can ask them questions about what they see. It should be fun. Also, to be clear, sometimes you want to slow down and linger and sometimes it is after their bedtimes and you have two hours of work to do and you are starving to death because you haven’t eaten dinner and you just need them to go to bed and in that case it’s okay to go faster. It’s also okay to skip pages. Well, you have some time to do that before they’ll catch on.
Absolutely. So my dad is a novelist but in addition to his life as a writer, I think the most important thing about my dad is that I can count on maybe one hand the times in my life when I have ever seen him without a book. That includes coming over for Thanksgiving or going to the movies or out to dinner, whatever. He doesn’t read it or open it while we’re in the middle of a conversation but he always has one in his hand or very close to his person, just in case. And my mother worked in early childhood literacy for the last thirty years of her life so she is an equally as big inspiration in terms of me understanding the importance of books and, more than that, just seeing the pleasure of reading. When I was in high school, my mom and her book club read Proust, and then they went to France. They read the Russians and then they went to Russia. It’s extreme, perhaps, but books were always just the most important thing in my household growing up. And I think that as a parent, there are so many things to worry about and so many things to figure out how to do, and I certainly don’t claim to have done all of those things right, but the one thing I know I have done right is making sure that my children have access to books every single day and have since the day they were born.
As a bookstore owner and a parent trying to instill a love of books, both roles sort of challenge you to create a community around this thing—reading—that might otherwise be very solitary. You’re creating an experience around it and you’re clearly very good at it…is there anything you’ve learned along the way that you could share?
For me, it’s something that I get so much pleasure out of. That’s not to say that children always have good taste in books. If there’s a book that you, yourself, as a human find deadly boring or irritating, there’s no doubt that your child will want to read that one thirty times in a row on any given day, for sure, they will. I have read so many Little Golden Books over and over again and you’re just like, oh really, this is a novelization of a cartoon movie and it’s not even as good as that. Even so, it’s also cuddling time. It’s a time of physical closeness. I have two children and my older child is cuddly and always still, at six, still would rather be in my lap than anywhere else, but my younger child, who's three, isn’t such a cuddler. He’s wiggly and wiry and sort of all over the place, but when we read, he will cuddle. So I think, for me, that’s also part of it, having those sweet moments. It’s the most important part of our bedtime ritual.
How do you approach reading to children of two different ages?
We divide and conquer. What’s funny is that you might think you would read to the older one and the younger one would listen, but it’s actually the opposite. I will read picture books to my younger child and they share a room and sometimes I’ll stop to let my youngest finish the sentence because he knows all of these books by heart and my oldest will chime in, too, so I know that he’s listening and then often when I am finished reading he’ll say, “Can you bring me that book next?” so I bring it over to him. That’s the thing about children, of course. They’re always paying attention.
What are some of your favorite books for children? Do you have a formula you can point to that makes a book click for you?
I think with small children, when you’re reading out loud, rhyming is so important, especially if it’s something that you’re reading over and over again. And it’s something that I don’t think most adult readers think about in their daily life. If they think about rhyming they might think about terrible poetry or something but rhyme in children’s books can just make the experience so delicious. I am thinking about Julia Donaldson who wrote "The Gruffalo" and "Room On The Broom." I could read those books a hundred times a day and not get tired of them. Books like "Goodnight Moon" last for a reason and it’s because of the magic combination of the rhythm of these simple words and these pictures that you can dive into and explore and that you can see new things in every time you look. Children’s picture book illustrators are incredible and they are thinking so hard about what to include and they understand the pleasure of finding things. I am thinking of someone like Sophie Blackall, who wrote and illustrated "Hello Lighthouse," which won the Caldecott, but these intricate drawings that children can find new things in all the time. And then there’s just the absolute geniuses whose brains are on display on every page, someone like Carson Ellis who wrote and illustrated "Du Iz Tak?" and a book called "Home," both of which are perfect works of art, but "Du Iz Tak?" in particular is incredible because it’s written in a made up language—and there’s a lot of dialogue! There’s an elaborate plot that you understand just through the pictures and the dialogue of these characters and it doesn’t matter that it’s written in a made up language because you understand it perfectly, which is absolute magic. I bought a page of it, one of her drawings, and it’s hanging in my kitchen and I look at it everyday. So there are those humans. Maurice Sendak or someone like that when you’re just like, your brain was made to do this. Perfect genius is not just for grownups.
What about your actual reading approach? Do you do voices?
I’m not great at voices. But I am a good reader, you know, in part because I’ve had a lot of practice reading out loud. I love reading out loud, but my husband, he might not have the same transformative experience that I do every time I pick up a book with my children, I’m an extreme example, I understand, but he’s very good at voices. What’s also wonderful about reading books out loud is that you don’t have to stick to what’s on the page. If there’s one illustration that the child loves, you can stay there, you can linger. You can ask them questions about what they see. It should be fun. Also, to be clear, sometimes you want to slow down and linger and sometimes it is after their bedtimes and you have two hours of work to do and you are starving to death because you haven’t eaten dinner and you just need them to go to bed and in that case it’s okay to go faster. It’s also okay to skip pages. Well, you have some time to do that before they’ll catch on.
From a design perspective, can you speak to how you approached the children’s reading space in Books Are Magic? Is there anything you learned that could be translated at home?
We really thought a lot about the kids section and how we wanted there to be several spaces where children can sit by themselves or with a parent and really just lose themselves, because to me that’s the magic of books, that you can get totally lost and just be somewhere else for that period of time. What I think is important in your house is to have books—whether it’s a bookshelf or baskets of books on the floor—to have them as accessible as toys. Have them visible always. Obviously there have been a lot of studies done about how literacy really starts in the womb and the number of words a child hears by the age of two has an enormous indication for their academic success for the rest of their lives. And in addition to that, I saw another study, that the number of books in your house has that effect too. The more books you have—and obviously it’s not just about owning the books, it’s not a museum—but the more that your children see and interact with books on a daily basis, the more they understand that it’s a pleasurable part of life and the more likely they are to enjoy it.
I also want to ask you about new moms who want to keep their reading lives alive because that feels like a moment of recalibration when you’re like, I know reading is something I want to do, but how? What was your experience like? How do you find time to read for yourself?
It’s impossible, of course. That’s the quick answer and I apologize to all the new mothers and mothers to be who are reading this. It’s going to be a while. When my first child was born I remember I thought, oh, it’s going to be great. I’m going to be breastfeeding in the middle of the night all the time and I’ll just read books, but it turned out I don’t like reading books on my phone and I never could figure out how to use my hands well while breastfeeding to turn pages so that was sort of a wash for me, but what I’ve started doing lately is listening to audio books. I mean, I read every night before I go to bed, but I’ve added audio books into the mix, and it’s wonderful. Because I walk, I have a couple of thirty minute walks a day, and thirty minutes is a nice little chunk of time and if I can actually feel like I’m reading, it’s such a good experience.
And I know you’re a fan of Meaghan O’Connell’s "And Now We Have Everything." What are your other recommendations for books about motherhood?
The Angela Garbes book, "Like A Mother," is another really great book that is about pregnancy and how pregnancy is treated in the United States of America and really how little women know and understand about their bodies which I certainly felt when I got pregnant for the first time, like, oh my god, no one talks about this. Pregnancy is treated like this secret mystery but until you have a baby and then all of a sudden pregnant women talk to each other a lot and then after you have a baby you have a couple of people to ask, “Are your boobs doing this?” but especially in the early stages, it’s really hard to feel like you have information. But there are a lot (of books) now that aren’t just these pat things full of platitudes, books that are talking about the naughtiness of it and the discomfort and the fear and the really real things that happen to your body.
Obviously memoir and first person accounts are so important in that space, but in fiction, too, I feel like motherhood is really having a moment. Do you think we could be at an inflection point for women writing about motherhood?
Maybe. What’s happened is that there have always been books about motherhood, but there have been books like Rachel Cusk ("A Life’s Work") and Jenny Offill’s book ("Dept. of Speculation"), books that are willing to expose not just negative parts of it, but the more complicated parts of it. Like Sheila Heti’s book ("Motherhood") was really about ambivalence, which is deeply taboo to discuss when thinking about motherhood.
What are you most excited to read next?
Fall is always crazy. Elizabeth Strout’s new book came out on Tuesday, "Olive Again." It’s perfection. Zadie Smith just published her first story collection, and she is just one of those writers that I will follow wherever she goes, so it’s just thrilling to have a story collection by her. I’ll mention one man. John Hodgman is a friend to the store and one of our favorites and I’ve been listening to his book "Medallion Status: True Stories From Secret Rooms" on audio book and it is so funny and so wonderful. I think sometimes I am a fiction person at my core, that’s what I love the most, but ever so often I will read non-fiction and I have been howling with laughter and I cried. So that’s a really wonderful one, too. I could go one for sixteen years but there’s a few.
And please can you tell us about your new book "All Adults Here?"
Absolutely. It comes out in May and it’s really a lot about what we’ve been talking about. It’s about parenthood and it’s about making mistakes and it’s about how the fact that all of us who are parents are doing our best all the time and that sometimes we make the wrong decisions. And when our children grow up they will also think that we’ve made some wrong decisions but they won’t necessarily be the same things that we identify. It’s about being the adult child, sandwiched in the middle, with aging parents and growing children and somehow still not feeling quite like you’re doing those things right. And yeah, hopefully it’s funny and sad and all of those things.
We really thought a lot about the kids section and how we wanted there to be several spaces where children can sit by themselves or with a parent and really just lose themselves, because to me that’s the magic of books, that you can get totally lost and just be somewhere else for that period of time. What I think is important in your house is to have books—whether it’s a bookshelf or baskets of books on the floor—to have them as accessible as toys. Have them visible always. Obviously there have been a lot of studies done about how literacy really starts in the womb and the number of words a child hears by the age of two has an enormous indication for their academic success for the rest of their lives. And in addition to that, I saw another study, that the number of books in your house has that effect too. The more books you have—and obviously it’s not just about owning the books, it’s not a museum—but the more that your children see and interact with books on a daily basis, the more they understand that it’s a pleasurable part of life and the more likely they are to enjoy it.
I also want to ask you about new moms who want to keep their reading lives alive because that feels like a moment of recalibration when you’re like, I know reading is something I want to do, but how? What was your experience like? How do you find time to read for yourself?
It’s impossible, of course. That’s the quick answer and I apologize to all the new mothers and mothers to be who are reading this. It’s going to be a while. When my first child was born I remember I thought, oh, it’s going to be great. I’m going to be breastfeeding in the middle of the night all the time and I’ll just read books, but it turned out I don’t like reading books on my phone and I never could figure out how to use my hands well while breastfeeding to turn pages so that was sort of a wash for me, but what I’ve started doing lately is listening to audio books. I mean, I read every night before I go to bed, but I’ve added audio books into the mix, and it’s wonderful. Because I walk, I have a couple of thirty minute walks a day, and thirty minutes is a nice little chunk of time and if I can actually feel like I’m reading, it’s such a good experience.
And I know you’re a fan of Meaghan O’Connell’s "And Now We Have Everything." What are your other recommendations for books about motherhood?
The Angela Garbes book, "Like A Mother," is another really great book that is about pregnancy and how pregnancy is treated in the United States of America and really how little women know and understand about their bodies which I certainly felt when I got pregnant for the first time, like, oh my god, no one talks about this. Pregnancy is treated like this secret mystery but until you have a baby and then all of a sudden pregnant women talk to each other a lot and then after you have a baby you have a couple of people to ask, “Are your boobs doing this?” but especially in the early stages, it’s really hard to feel like you have information. But there are a lot (of books) now that aren’t just these pat things full of platitudes, books that are talking about the naughtiness of it and the discomfort and the fear and the really real things that happen to your body.
Obviously memoir and first person accounts are so important in that space, but in fiction, too, I feel like motherhood is really having a moment. Do you think we could be at an inflection point for women writing about motherhood?
Maybe. What’s happened is that there have always been books about motherhood, but there have been books like Rachel Cusk ("A Life’s Work") and Jenny Offill’s book ("Dept. of Speculation"), books that are willing to expose not just negative parts of it, but the more complicated parts of it. Like Sheila Heti’s book ("Motherhood") was really about ambivalence, which is deeply taboo to discuss when thinking about motherhood.
What are you most excited to read next?
Fall is always crazy. Elizabeth Strout’s new book came out on Tuesday, "Olive Again." It’s perfection. Zadie Smith just published her first story collection, and she is just one of those writers that I will follow wherever she goes, so it’s just thrilling to have a story collection by her. I’ll mention one man. John Hodgman is a friend to the store and one of our favorites and I’ve been listening to his book "Medallion Status: True Stories From Secret Rooms" on audio book and it is so funny and so wonderful. I think sometimes I am a fiction person at my core, that’s what I love the most, but ever so often I will read non-fiction and I have been howling with laughter and I cried. So that’s a really wonderful one, too. I could go one for sixteen years but there’s a few.
And please can you tell us about your new book "All Adults Here?"
Absolutely. It comes out in May and it’s really a lot about what we’ve been talking about. It’s about parenthood and it’s about making mistakes and it’s about how the fact that all of us who are parents are doing our best all the time and that sometimes we make the wrong decisions. And when our children grow up they will also think that we’ve made some wrong decisions but they won’t necessarily be the same things that we identify. It’s about being the adult child, sandwiched in the middle, with aging parents and growing children and somehow still not feeling quite like you’re doing those things right. And yeah, hopefully it’s funny and sad and all of those things.