One Page At a Time Podcast

One Page At a Time Podcast


Episode 22: How We Read with Amanda Pilmer Roberts

March 04, 2020

This week we are joined in a discussion of How We Read with Amanda Pilmer Roberts, a “semi-retired” librarian, as she describes it, who has a great love of (and talent for) music, dance and theater. She has degrees in Theater, Musicology and Library Science and has spent her varied career working in unique school libraries, singing in choirs, choreographing musicals and now, her latest adventure, raising her beautiful baby daughter. 

In this episode we talk about

1. Amanda’s unique career in equal parts theater and libraries. She gives some great insights into what goes into many librarians’ careers and gives us a sense of how many different types of libraries there are, which many people aren’t aware of!

2. How being a librarian has influenced Amanda’s approach to books with her family now that she has her daughter. Suffice it to say, she will never hesitate heading to a library and asking a librarian for help when they are in need of books or information!

3. What reading looks like with her baby, who is just younger than a year old. This is a hard stage for many people to read to their kids at, as they are active and mobile, yet not always engaged in book, and Amanda shares what works for her and her baby.

4. Both Amanda and her husband are actively involved in reading with their daughter and she talks about what the looks like in their family. They had talked about it and knew that books were going to be a part of their family’s life even before they were married and had kids and started their book collections for their future family long ago. 

5. We talk about tracking the books our kids read and Amanda makes a great point that she wishes she had kept track when she was younger, since there are books that she remembers and wishes she could find then again, but doesn’t remember enough about it (...the cover was blue…?).

6. Amanda wraps up by sharing with us a technique she used as a school librarian to help her students to pick books to read. She used a system from Scholastic called PICK (link to it below). It’s a great system helpful in a school as well as family setting!

In How We Read with Amanda Pilmer Roberts we mention:

Books

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease and Cyndi Giorgis

ABCs of Physics by Chris Ferrie

The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood

If you enjoyed listening to Amanda Pilmer Roberts, try one of these other episodes:

Episode 17: How We Read with Rachel Lambourne

Episode 13: From Reluctant Reader to Librarian with Harold Hayes

Episode 11: How We Read with Cathy Balfanz

Episode 01: The More You Read the Better you Get with Cyndi Giorgis