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Quote by Holly Smale

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All That Glitters

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Author

Holly Smale
Holly Smale

Holly Smale is a British writer known for her young adult novels. Her works are celebrated for their humor and wit, appealing to a wide audience of young readers. more

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“First coming aboard, a new arrival makes a cautious survey of the crew, trying to winnow the affable and good-natured from the surly and truculent. Some of the crewmen will seem easygoing, happy-go-lucky, good-fellows-all; others may appear to be reserved or even aloof. Yet I found that at the end of a voyage these aloof ones were often the persons whom I grew to like and respect the most, while those who seemed so agreeable turned out to be rascals.”

“The guests were strangers no longer. They hung out with the members of the party in groups of three and four, their arms thrown around each other’s shoulders, like close pals. They had broken bread together, shared the little details, the deep desires, some secrets of their lives, even their hopes and fears. What more was left between them? They were content.”

“...before most of us possess an inkling that babies could be listening to us, infants are making astonishing connections between listening to human voices and developing their language system. Think how much more can happen in those regions when parents slowly, deliberately read to their children, *just to them*, with mutually focused attention. This disarmingly simple act makes huge contributions: it provides not only the most palpable associations with reading, but also a time when parent and child are together in a timeless interaction that involves shared attention; learning about words, sentences, and concepts; and even learning what a book is. One of the most salient influences on young children's attention involves the shared gaze that occurs and develops while parents read to them. With little conscious effort children learn to focus their visual attention on what their parent or caretaker is looking at without losing an ounce of their own curiosity and exploratory behaviors. As the philosopher Charles Taylor notes, "The crucial condition for human language learning is *joint* attention," which he and others who are involved in studying the ontogenesis of language consider one of the most important features of human evolution.”

“You have to talk to your children about things, a lot of our parents don’t do that. You have to explain things to children as to why certain things happen. I think that a good way of improving comprehension is to read the newspaper with your child. A lot of times certain sensational things happen and children want to find out why it happened. And sometimes you would hear them talking to each other passing on erroneous information. Daynette Gardiner, the best School Psychologist in The Bahamas”