Noutăți
27 martie 2026
Good morning, Citim Acasă 2026 Friends!
A letter from Brandi Bates, Citim Împreună România
This is our last time together here, for now, and I have to say, I hate for this to end! I have had so much fun reading aloud and playing with these books, and seeing your photos online of you doing the same!
When we started four weeks ago, I proposed that our goal might be to develop a deeper trust in the Read Aloud process. Today I will share the final, and greatest, reason Reading Aloud (especially proficient reading adults, like you, to children who are not – yet!- as proficient as you) can be deeply trusted.
The Read Aloud process can be deeply trusted because at its core is Story.
And humans are made for story. In fact, to be human is to be a story. You are a story! I am a story! We are stories! So when you (a story) read aloud a picture book or a poem (a story) to a child (a story), so many deep and wonderful things happen toward growth and positive transformation (visible and invisible, including growing reading proficiency and comprehension). Stories, especially those shared aloud, resonate so deeply within us, on every level, that they have the power to change us, on every level. There are not a lot of things I trust more than the Read Aloud process to make the world a better place.
So with that, I will bid you farewell for now, and I thank you!
May this not be The End of our shared story “Citim Acasă 2026”, but let it be, as Carmen Tiderle ends her final poem in Homarul Homer: τέλος . Pronounced “Telos” this word means “The End”, Sfârşit. But the word τέλος embraces the ideas of completion, a goal achieved, a purpose fulfilled. If your trust in the Read Aloud process has deepened so that you will do it again and again, eventually every day, for the children in your lives, then it is a τέλος ending indeed.
Hope to see some of you next month at the National Literacy Conference!
Brandi, Citim Împreună România
Homarul Homer
Carment Tiderle (Editura Cartex, 2024)
Un vechi proverb spune că „un măr pe zi ține doctorul departe”.
I say, “a poem a day keeps functional illiteracy* away” (and lots of other unwanted things too)! I doubt many of us are very motivated to teach children to learn to read if we are not striving to teach them to read well, to be functionally literate (in other words, to understand what they read and to use what they read to improve their lives). And to like to read. So, if you are on theteam to grow Functional Literacy, I have good news: Poetry is your new best friend!
And here’s more good news. While there are not many native picture books (another bestfriend to growing Functional Literacy), there are a lot of good, homegrown poems.
And here’s the best news: Romania has Carmen Tiderle! Here is not the place for me to write as much as I could about the Treasure Chest that is Carmen Tiderle. (I could write a book!) But I will say that Carmen is a best friend to growingtomorrow’s functionally literate Romanian adult.
If you want your children to read well, here’s a recipe: Buy (or check out from the library) all of Carmen’s books along with some other poetry books, then read aloud one of Carmen’s poems a day and a poem by someone else, one at the beginning of the day, one at the end. Wala!
*Decoding text, but not comprehending well.
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How can we bring the story to life?
Discover in the gallery below 8 creative ideas on how to explore this wonderful book after reading it together!
SWIPE THROUGH THE IMAGES TO SAVE THEM ALL.
