Story Time

Reading aloud at bedtime is a habit pediatricians have since put in writing. In 2014 the American Academy of Pediatrics issued its first policy statement on literacy promotion, asking doctors to urge parents to read aloud to children from infancy until at least the start of kindergarten. Parents were doing it long before. Goodnight Moon, which has put generations of American children to sleep, came out in 1947.

There is a particular patience in a father who keeps reading after his audience has gone to sleep. Some do it to finish the page. Most do it because the voice is part of what the child is falling asleep to.

The scene is a quiet living room at night, shown in soft, rounded shapes. A bearded father in a cream sweater and soft gray slippers sits in an armchair with an open book in his hands, smiling as he reads. His child, in blue, is asleep against his side under a plaid blanket. A lamp with a pull chain glows beside them against blue-gray walls, and a small picture stands on the table at the left.