It’s good to preview a book before you read it out loud to kids, so you can decide beforehand how you’d like to present the story.

Here are a couple of things you can do when you’re pre-reading a story:

1. Find the drama.
If you’re not naturally dramatic, you’ll need Mem Fox’s read-aloud guide, which has great ideas on how you can vary your voice (loud/soft/fast/slow/high/low) to keep your listeners engaged. Her ideas can be applied to any story — but you’ll need to practise!

2. Polish your pronunciation.
French names like Degas always trip me up. Thankfully Merriam-Webster’s pronunciation guide covers names of famous personalities too. It’s useful to check out names because you wouldn’t want to be talking about “Ay-sop’s” fables when it’s really pronounced “ee-sop”.

And if you’re not sure how a word’s said, don’t guess, just check. We Singaporeans tend to mess up on our word stress, so it doesn’t hurt to be careful. (An example: how do you say “obligatory?” I’m guessing a fair number of people here say it as “orh-blee-gay-tor-ree,” with equal stress on all syllables. Click here to see where your stress should land.)

Image courtesy Free Fifties Clip Art.