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The Current Transcript for April 19, 2019

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

They're unquestionably dishonest, unethical, immoral and unpatriotic and should be condemned by every American. That is not the subject of vindication. That is the subject of condemnation and that is why I think we should view that Mueller report.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: That is Adams Schiff, California Democrat and the House Intelligence Committee chair with his take on how to read yesterday's much anticipated and somewhat redacted Mueller reports. Schiff's characterisation of U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign with Russian representatives came across as a blistering rebuttle to the US attorney general, William Barr, who has been framing the Mueller Report narrative differently. Well now that all four hundred forty eight pages of the report minus the thick black lines have been downloaded, scanned and slapped on by journalists, partisans and curious citizens. We're asking just what it all really means and where Washington and the rest of the U.S. goes from here. After that we will switch over to a different kind of reading, an interview with The Wall Street Journal children's book predict about what she calls 'the enchanted hour'.

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I was reading the book and I had two toddlers on my lap. Had another daughter, my eldest daughter in next to me and on the floor my husband was lying there in his suit having just come home from work, and I thought I am really doing something real here.

The many and sometimes surprising benefits of gathering the family around a book, perhaps something for you to do this long weekend. Hi I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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Mueller report won't sway public opinion enough for Democrats to attempt impeaching Trump: journalist

Guests: John Fund, Vicky Ward, Philip Bump

PC: After much anticipation former U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election has finally been made public at least much of the 448 page investigation has, while many parts have been redacted. But what we do know of what's in the report is plenty dramatic. It contains new details about the Trump campaign's contacts with people tied to the Russian government who were actively interfering in the 2016 election campaign. And there's an entire volume devoted to possible obstruction of justice though ultimately that concludes with a double negative, saying investigators cannot be confident that The President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice. President Trump responded to the Mueller report speaking at a White House event yesterday for wounded veterans.

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[Applause]

DONALD TRUMP: And they're having a good day. I'm having a good day too. It was called, no collusion, no obstruction.

[Applause and cheers]

DONALD TRUMP: There never was by the way, there never will be.

PC: We are going to hear more about what this means for both Republicans and Democrats. But first to bring us up to speed on the report's findings we are joined by Philip Bump. Philip is a national correspondent for The Washington Post based in New York. But today we have reached him in Washington. Hi.

PHILIP BUMP: Good morning.

PC: Philip, tell us President Trump is saying this report proves no collusion. Is he right?

PHILIP BUMP: No it doesn't. What the report actually shows is that Robert Mueller and his team were unable to reach the rather high benchmark they set for themselves of proving coordination or conspiracy in legal terms between Trump's campaign and Russia. At one point Mueller laments the fact that he was unable to contact a number of witnesses that he received inaccurate information from witnesses as well? And it also details all the various ways in which Donald Trump responded to the investigation in ways that were broached the question of whether or not he was trying to obstruct justice. It is the case that Attorney General Barr presented this as a no collusion report. That's not however what Mueller actually said.

PC: Okay so let's focus on the word collusion that has been thrown around by Donald Trump and many others over the past couple of years. On a Mueller's terms how is he defined collusion and conspiracy?

PHILIP BUMP: Well he actually doesn't define collusion. He explicitly, in the report, says I'm not addressing the question of collusion. In part presumably because it isn't a legal term. It isn't something that has a definition. He instead focuses on conspiracy focuses on coordination. And so this term collusion which has been used over the course of the past two years, as you say, as sort of this rubric for what is alleged to have happened, has always been a bad term simply because there is no agreement on what it actually constitutes right. Donald Trump seems to think that the only form of collusion would be criminal conspiracy a lot of his critics see collusion as something far less than that, something like the Trump Tower meetings in 2016. They see that as having been evidence of collusion. And so that's I think why Mueller have stepped away from it. But again Barr very pointedly reintroduced in his press conference yesterday morning.

PC: And so that leaves the road open for anyone to interpret collusion how they want.

PHILIP BUMP: Exactly implementable yes.

PC: Okay. The other major issue as you mentioned is obstruction of justice and I know this is a lengthy report, but what does the report say about that issue generally?

PHILIP BUMP: It says generally that, first of all, just as a quick baseline, Mueller himself set a standard by which he was not going to try and improve a criminal case. He was instead going to try and gather evidence so that down the road if someone wants to do something with it they would have the evidence. That's essentially what he says in the report itself. What he actually outlines then is a series of events in which President Trump tries to take actions which would have inhibited the probe. Either through trying to influence witnesses or by trying to remove Mueller himself from his position. And at one point sort of stunningly, Mueller even says that basically the only reason Trump wasn't able to get away with these things is because the people he ordered to undertake these actions refused to do so.

PC: Okay, There's a lot of talk of the other word of this report which is 'redaction' which are black lines that cross out some of the words. It's 448 pages. I'm not asking you to give me a word count but how much of this report was redacted?

PHILIP BUMP: 10 percent or so. I mean there were certainly a lot of redactions but they tend to be clustering specific areas. In part because a lot of the redactions dealt with ongoing criminal matters. There were 14 criminal referrals listed in the report, 12 of which were still unknown. They were themselves redacted. But one for example deals with Roger Stone who was indicted in January. There's a lot of sections of the report - where Stone was a pretty major actor in this - is clearly being referred to but his segments are redacted because he is the subject of an ongoing investigation.

PC: Look I want to bring out a couple more voices into our conversation. John Fund is a columnist for the conservative magazine The National Review. He too is in Washington and Vicky Ward is an investigative journalist and the author of the new book Kushner Inc. She's in our New York studio. Hi to both of you.

VICKY WARD: Hi.

JOHN FUND: Hi.

PC: Vicky. Let's start with you. What is your biggest take away from the report?

VICKY WARD: That it's the corruption sort of not the not the collusion. You know I think it really endorses this theme of my book which is- my book obviously focused on Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, but they reflect a wider world of astonishingly astonishing incompetence. And it's a great shame you can't indict people for incompetence because you kind of see this on every page in this report. I mean one of the most extraordinary moments to me was when Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador are trying to figure out where they could have communications that wouldn't be monitored and Jared suggests the Russian embassy and that's actually the Russian ambassador. He points out that is a remarkably stupid and dangerous idea. So I have always felt my book is very much about how Jared Kushner's conflicts of interests which are mentioned in the report have led us down a very dangerous path policy wise, and at the Mueller report is really the beginning not the end and I think this to me that's what this report shows.

PC: Okay well talk about beginnings and ends in a bit. But John Fund, Vicky's words take away is this is shows incompetence which is not criminal. That kind of agrees in a sense with the 2020 campaign who issued a statement yesterday saying this report fully - this is their words - fully exonerates The President. Are you in agreement with that, that this is an exoneration?

JOHN FUND: Well first of all Jared Kushner is certainly guilty of many things including incompetence. He's apparently the only White House aide who advised The President to fire James Comey which was a colossal mistake on so many levels. Having said that I disagree that it's a shame that we don't indict people for incompetence. I don't want to live in a society that dates people for incompetence. This report is a devastating analysis of President Trump's character and its behavior. But as a legal document it calls into real question the whole issue of how in the world this collusion investigation began, how it started. The role of a Steele dossier which was a document paid for by the Democratic National Committee in the Hillary Clinton campaign that started all of this, and convinced the FBI and the intelligence agencies to launch investigations at the Trump campaign. So there's a whole bunch of things here that are bad for Trump but we also have to remember there’s a second story here which is how in the world did this all began, and what in the world was the role of the FBI and the intelligence agencies in starting this whole wrenching process.

PC: Okay let me bring Philip Bump in here. Philip how did this all begin?

PHILIP BUMP: So it's sort of surprising to hear that assessment. I mean that's sort of been the line by properness supporters is that this all started with the Steele dossier. Steele dossier isn't even mentioned in the report. It is quite pretty obviously not the predicate for this investigation because the predicate of the investigation is included in the report itself which is among other things. For example that this campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had received information from a Kremlin linked professor that the Russians had e-mails incriminating Hillary Clinton. He shared that information with an Australian diplomat in May of 2016 after WikiLeaks started releasing materials. Then the Australians tipped off the Americans, okay, we heard this thing back in May. Now that was one of the predicates. But more broadly you look at people like Paul Manafort. You look at people like Carter Page and the report itself articulates why these people are already on the FBI radar, even before the campaign started it. Page had these suspicious contacts of the Russians back in 2013. Manafort's history of working in Ukrainian politics for pro-Russian politicians was something that was obviously known to everyone. There are all these other reasons. You know this has been an ongoing narrative that the Steele dossier has something to do with this. But the fact that the Steele dossier doesn't come up at all over the course of Mueller report I think is significant.

PC: You know on the first page of this report it says - and this is the quote: "The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion". Period. This morning for its part the Kremlin said the report has no evidence that the Russian state meddled in the 2016 presidential campaign. So Vicky Ward, let's start with the president himself. Why won't The President seemingly take more seriously the idea that Russians interfered in U.S. politics?

VICKY WARD: Because I think you see very clearly in their report a picture of a man who sees sort of everything crowding in on him, and if he were to admit that that's one step closer to the wolves, the wolves coming in on him. I mean what you see in those pages - and I found this sort of extraordinary read - He's like a child kicking back at the investigation. I mean and I think what Philip just said is entirely right. I mean the reason there was an investigation is because our election was tampered with. We were - you know - the Russians did hack our election unquestionably. And then Donald Trump fired the man who was put in charge of investigating that. There are very clear set of consequences here. But I think, you know going back when you talk about that Paul Manafort and all these people clearly sort of trying to take this situation, again it comes down to judgment. Who thought it would be a good idea to hire Paul Manafort. I mean it was partly Trump. It was also Jared Kushner. I mean there is extraordinarily poor judgment exercised in all of this.

PC: John Fund, let's stay with the Russian aspect of this. Why do you think The President, I don't know if brushing away is fair enough term but let's not load it, let's just say taking more seriously the idea that Russians are interfering In U.S. politics?

JOHN FUND: Clearly the Russians tried to interfere in a 2016 election but their efforts were frankly pathetic, [unintelligible] and disjointed. So I don't think we want to exaggerate what happened. We certainly have to make sure it doesn't happen in the future. But I will go back to the fact that Philip Bump says that the Steele report is not mentioned at all in the in the Mueller report. Well ,yes, and one should ask does a former FBI director really want to question the actions of his own agency in using the Steele report - which clearly has been discredited in large part. And the answer is Bob Mueller pulled some punches too. So rather than point this to the Mueller [unintelligible] at all, being interested in the Steele report we should ask why. Look there's a new poll from the Economist magazine, by an eighteen point margin, Americans want an investigation of how in the world this all started, was the Trump campaign spied on improperly by U.S. intelligence agencies. A third as Democrats in this Economist magazine poll wanted an investigation. Bob Kerrey was wondering vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he's a Democrat, he was one of five Democrats in 9/11 Commission, says his party is delusional in this area. And he says one of the prime actors in confusing this issue is Adam Schiff who is the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. He says Adam Schiff has completely politicized this whole issue. And this Bob Kerrey, a respected Democrat. So there are two stories here. I think the media can walk and chew gum at the same time. It can look at the moral report and it's devastating [unintelligible] of how Trump behaved. At the same time it needs to ask what in the world did the FBI and intelligence agencies do to start this whole mess in motion in 2016, and were their actions justified.

PC: Philip Bump, it's only been less than 24 hours since this thing came out and you already see how this is all lining up on partisan ways. Everyone has their own interpretation and says-- so let me ask this basic question. Here we stand in April, whatever it is, good Friday. What's the point of the Mueller report now? Like where do we go from here with this thing?

PHILIP BUMP: Right. It's interesting that you frame that as what's the point of it. The point of it always was simply to answer the question that was posed by Rod Rosenstein the deputy secretary general when he appointed Mueller, which is what actually happened? What was it that happened between Trump and Russia, if anything? And so Mueller's report tries to answer that question. Mueller, I think, there's no indication he was acting as anything other than a good faith actor. Obviously he is certainly subject to political- you know the sort of winds that blow in Washington to some extent. But I think that for the large part he did what he was asked to do. Now the question is how America responds. I think you're seeing an extremely good representation of how Americans can respond to that on this broadcast. There are certainly a lot of Trump supporters who are taking a very very strong position that mirrors President, which that he was fully exonerated of collusion, fully exonerated on obstruction. I think that neither of those points is particularly well founded. But at this point there is a FOX News poll that came out shortly before Mueller concluded his work in which most Americans said there is probably only a very small chance that can change their mind based on what Mueller found, even before they knew what Mueller found. And I think that's exactly what we're seeing is that people have been so entrenched on this issue for the past two years that very little was going to dissuade them from where they happen to be.

PC: I should say Donald Trump has tweeted this morning about the Mueller report I'll just read you a bit of it. 'Statements are made about me by certain people in the crazy Mueller report in itself written by 18 angry Democrat Trump haters which are fabricated and totally untrue. Watch out for people that take so-called notes when the notes never existed until needed. Because I never agreed to testify it was not necessary for me to respond to statements made in the report about me, some of which are total BS and only given to make the other person look good or me to look bad. This was an illegally started hoax that never should have happened'. It goes on. Vicky Ward, you know the Democrats have said we should impeach. So there's now there's debate on all sides and in intra parties. How seriously do you think Democrats in the House should consider impeaching this president?

VICKY WARD: So look I mean it's difficult right because I think that as Philip said a lot of people found reading the report difficult to stomach, and it's been pointed out that you know the behavior that's been exhibited inside this White House is near, beneath even, what Richard Nixon did and he was impeached. Having said that the practicality of the situation is that even if the House were to vote to impeach, it's not going to pass the Senate. With an election looming in 2020 I think you know Democrats don't have to think really hard what it is they want to focus their attention and energy, and the attention and energy of the voters. You know as Philip said that this report, as damning as it is, it doesn't change people's minds. Is it not more important to focus on the other things? I mean these 12 investigations we don't know what they are but could be in many ways far more damning than the Russia investigation in the months before the election.

PC: John Fund, yesterday The President tweeted a little bit. Today, he's got more. Is the worst over for Donald Trump as you see it now? There are many many court proceedings ahead with people surrounding him, but do you think the worst is over for him at this point?

JOHN FUND: Well the 12 criminal referrals that are pending in the Mueller report almost certainly are related to people lying to congress or lying to investigators or some [unintelligible] because Maulers report is circumscribed. It only dealt with Russia. Other things were handed off to the southern district of New York. The worst enemy The President has is himself. This report is devastating because every Trump supporter should realize, you like his policies and you may admire his bravado but the man is capable of not lying. He is a man of bad character and a report laid that out. He was only saved by his aides bravely preventing him from trying to do very stupid bizarre things. So the worst is not over for The President depending on the president's behavior. Having said that The President has a point. You know both sides can engage in excesses here. The President clearly was excessive but I think we do have to go back to this because the other side is not blameless here. You have someone like Bob Kerrey standing up and saying if we want a proper intelligence analysis of where we are, we need to look both at what the Russians did and how our intelligence agencies may have been misused. Liberals used to care about [unintelligible] excess of intelligence agencies. I find it astonishing that these questions are no can be out because the enemy in this case than Donald Trump. Just because Trump is a bad guy doesn't mean he doesn't have a point.

PC: Let me just ask if we have time and try to get to all three of you. Vicky Ward, this is the point you made yesterday. You tweeted this that the Mueller report is just the beginning and he said that at the beginning of our conversation. What do you mean by that?

VICKY WARD: So I'm not just talking John about the 12 redacted or ongoing investigations actually in the report. You know I know from my reporting for my book that Muller's team had to talk to a huge number of people, people from countries that really have nothing to do with Russia, talking to people from the Middle East. They may still be trying to talk to people from the Middle East. There are a lot of questions about the Kushner company's business interests and indeed the Trump family's business interests that I think it seems fairly clear are sitting with the Southern District of New York. And to be honest those are the investigations that really interest me, because the idea that you have a president and his family who came into government not so much for public service but for self-service, I think is the crime possible. You know if it's there that's what we should be looking at for 2020.

PC: John Fund we're short on time but where do we go from here and how you're looking at this?

JOHN FUND: Well impeachment is a political process. If the Democrats wish to pursue it they're welcome to it. Their base clearly desires it. It would be a wrenching national argument. Ultimately I don't think I would succeed in the Senate but if they are sincere, that these this behavior merits removal of the president rather than leaving it to the electorate in November of 2012, that's their decision. I think that ultimately the Democrats are going to step back from impeachment. Ultimately the president is going to run for re-election. There will be a Democratic opponent. And the people get to decide how democracy should functions except in extraordinary circumstances.

PC: Philip, beyond the hot takes, the interpretations, what's next as you see it?

PHILIP BUMP: Honestly it's a good question. I think John's right that the Democrats are going to sort of [unintelligible] about this idea of impeachment for a brief period of time. It seems like good leadership on the Democratic side isn't really into it. But I think it's going to be fascinating sort of to see what happens with the further investigations and how Trump responds over the long term. I think it's sort of a black box. This result was not clear cut one way or the other. And so I think the most likely result of the short term is that everyone keeps modelling forward they happen\.

PC: And on it goes. Thank you to all three of you for joining us today. Appreciate it.

PHILIP BUMP: Thank you.

VICKY WARD: Thank you.

JOHN FUND: Thank you.

PC: Philip Bump is a national correspondent for The Washington Post based in New York. But he's in Washington today. Vicky Ward is an investigative journalist and author of the book Kushner Inc. She was in our New York studio. And John Fund is a columnist for the conservative magazine The National Review. He too was in Washington D.C. Listen if you've been following the Mueller report; Canadian, American, otherwise and you want to chime in about what happens next and how you think this all unwinds do get in touch with at The Current. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, if your preferred method is Facebook, find us at Facebook.com/cbcthecurrent or you can email us by going to our Web site which is cbc.ca/thecurrent. Once you there you can click on Contact Us link. All right coming up in our next half hour here on The Current: From the Mueller report some very different kind of reading. The many splendor wonder that is story time with your kids. It is not 448 pages long I bet. Wall Street Journal children books critic Meghan Cox Gurdon on the enchanted hour. She'll be with us in just a bit. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay. And you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

This author says reading to your children an hour a day could help the whole family

Guest: Meghan Cox Gurdon

PC: I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday Edition of The Current. As anyone who has raised, or just read to, young children will know, kids often want to hear the same stories re-told, time and time again. Well, on this Good Friday, we thought we'd pull a favourite story of ours off the shelf to enjoy once more. Anna Maria Tremonti first brought us this interview in March.

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PAT STAY: She swallowed the pen she was happy again that she swallowed the pen. Brrrr.

GIRL: She swallowed the pen she wrote in the books, I don’t know why she swallowed the books...

AMT: That is Nova Scotia rapper Pat stay reading with his children Alaura who is seven and Calvin 17 months. Cuddling with the caregiver around the pages of a picture book is an iconic image of childhood. In a moment this family says brings them closer together.

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GIRL: At the end something really funny happens. She eats a cow and she burps it all out.

PAT STAY: It's the best part of my life. I love. It's every day, every night thing. Usually Mommy is here reading to all of them. They all love reading. He comes to me with a book. Every night, he loves it. He'll sit down and push himself right back to you so you can read him a book, and Alaura falls asleep with books in her hands.

GIRL: Yes. [Giggles]

AMT: The Voice, the stories, the time spent together can create a lasting impression. We asked some prominent Canadians who have written books for children to share their favorite memories of listening to someone reading them a book.

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VOICE 1: The first book I can remember being read is one that my mum got for me shortly after we moved to Canada. So we moved here when I was 3 years old from India. This book was such a favourite that we read it to pieces, I remember, and my mum is sad that she doesn't have it anymore. The only line I remember is 'are you crowded out by other has 17 sisters, 18 brothers'.

VOICE 2: She would sit on the edge of her bed and I would be lying in bed under the covers with my head propped up. And my momma raised us boys. She spent so much time with us. She sacrificed a lot to be with us. It wasn't that we didn't get time with her, it was just that the time that we had was there was so special to us because she was all that we had.

VOICE 3: I remember those windy days in Moncton New Brunswick when the power would go out and we gather round candles and 'Dad, please tell us a story with your mouth talking'. And that's how we used to ask for it actually and it meant sometimes a made up story, but often a story that he was going to read and we were going to gather around. Everything from the Saggy Baggy Elephant to [unintelligible] kids Bible. I just remember saying [unintelligible].

VOICE 4: So just like in the book Tom Sawyer we were out exploring the woods by ourselves and we would come home, mud all over springing back various things fish that needed to be cleaned that we'd eat later on for dinner. So as my mother and I were reading Tom Sawyer together, I would interject with stories about what had happened when we were out in the woods playing that day. When they built the raft and they - Tom and Huck - go to an island in the Mississippi River. And anyway my mother's saying 'okay, so you can't do that. You can't go and steal in the woods overight or do anything like that, and don't run away from home or do anything crazy'.

VOICE 5: The smell and the taste and the touch of books. My grade two teacher sitting on her lap and the smell of her perfume, lilly of the valley, I can remember that as she opened the book on the pages crinkled and turned.

VOCIE 6: One of the ones that I remember most is Outside over There by Maurice Sendak which was kind of a messed up book, looking back at it now. What I recall most of it Outside over There is that there's a goblin baby. My mom read me this book called my Momma says there aren't such things as gouls, zombies, vampires fiends. That scared me for several years. Sometimes I still down the stairs as walk and see if anything is following behind me because of that book.

VOICE 1: And when I was a little bit older I remember sitting with her and her saying 'oh you know one day you'll be reading yourself you won't want me to read to anymore' and it was I could tell from her that that made her sad, but at the time I couldn't picture ever there being a time where she wouldn't be reading to me. So I don't know what she was talking about.

AMT: The voices of Manjusha Pawagi family court judge and author of The Girl who Hated Books - which she points out is not autobiographical. David. A Robertson Author of the Governor General's Award winning When we were Alone about a young girl and her grandmother sharing the history of residential schools. Author, storyteller and children's book store owner Sheree Fitch and former astronaut Dave Williams who has written a series of books for kids about space. All of those voices you just heard. Reading to children out loud isn't just a source of warm feelings and lovely memories, however. Research shows it is also one of the most beneficial activities for developing brains. Journalist Meghan Cox Gurdon is the children's book critic for The Wall Street Journal. She's got five kids. She is the author of the Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction. And she joins us from Washington. Hello.

MEGHAN COX GURDON: Oh Hello Anna Maria, lovely to be with you.

AMT: What were you thinking as you listen to those stories about being read to out loud?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: Oh I was beaming. I was sitting here beaming and just so happy to hear this sort of validation of what I know to be true what I've experienced myself. It's just such a lovely kind of braid of time and books and people and generations. This tradition of reading aloud. You know it connects parents to children and children to their children that they have in this wonderful way with language and warmth. It's just about the most beautiful thing we have at our disposal as human beings.

AMT: What is it that makes the activity so memorable so enjoyable?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: All sorts of things are happening. Of course there the emotional connection that people feel that we heard so beautifully brought out in those in those remarks. But we now know there is a lot of science to support what we experienced anecdotally there is a physiological reward in sitting down together with a book and a child, or for the child with a book and a parent. It's a chemical alteration that takes place. So we know that for instance stress hormones are decreased and binding hormones increase, just that simple kind of lovely sacrificial moment as sitting down together. And then we also know that the picture book experience for a child with their young and developing brain is immensely nourishing cognitively. There is research now that shows us that when a child is looking at the pictures in a picture book you know maybe sitting in close proximity with a loving adult and listening to the words, the vocabulary, the cadences, the grammar, the voice of the loved one reading the story, all sorts of deep important brain networks are engaging and synchronizing in a way that is very productive in developing a child's kind of cognitive capacities.

AMT: What is one of your favorite memories of reading with your kids?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: Oh my goodness I've been reading with them for 24 years and I think the one that really still stands out to me is-- we've read Treasure Island that wonderful Robert Louis Stevenson book many many times over the years, every couple of years it comes through. And I remember once having that extraordinary moment where I looked around and I thought this is it. This is the stuff. I was reading the book. I had to toddlers on my lap. I didn't have the fifth baby at that point so just four of them. My son was stretched out on the back of the sofa behind my shoulders kind of like a jaguar. I had another daughter my eldest daughter tucked in next to me, on the floor my husband was lying there in his suit having just come home from work to join the story. And I thought I am really doing something real here. And I'm thrilled to discover through the research for my book that that wasn't just a kind of Gaza impression. It's true we really do something very significant when we read aloud.

AMT: It does sound sort of nostalgic through the gauzy curtains there why is it still necessary today when we have all kinds of technology kids can use?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: This is exactly the thing and this is why I think it's very important that we're having this conversation now. You know we are all grappling with the effects of technology. And screens and devices are fantastic tools but they make it incredibly difficult for us to focus and pay attention and to be fully present with the people we love most. Even to know really what to do with ourselves when we're asked line. We're all being trained to have these very short attention spans and we know from a great deal of research now that our interactions with technologies are impeding our human relationships and this is crucial when it comes to parents and children. So you know I posit that reading aloud really is kind of a cure for what ails us. You know we're not going to get rid of our technology. We’re not going to you know have some kind of Luddite explosion but we do need to learn to live in harmony with our machines and reading aloud is something that supplies the nourishment - the kind of very human nourishment that we need that will help us live in greater balance.

AMT: I know you do it but you know there are people listening going 'okay, parents are busy, they're working, they're stuck in traffic to get home, they're cooking food, they're getting kids to activities'. How reasonable is it to expect to have time from reading like that.

MEGHAN COX GURDON: That's a very important question. I would never want to reproach any parent or say you know you have to do this one other thing on the To Do list but here's the thing about it. The busier you are as a parent the less time you have tranquilly with your children the more valuable reading aloud is. You know and Anna Maria, the reason for that is it brings in so many domains. It's a way of fomenting conversation and having like natural exchanges. It's an activity that brings you physically close together which is very physiologically rewarding and you know necessary children need to have closeness. We do too frankly. It's also a way of bathing your children in language which is so helpful to them as they learn to navigate the world and become fluent readers and speakers and able to express themselves. So you know you get all of these things. You get language and the development of a nice long attention span which is very important. All of these wonderful capacities are brought to bear in this single experience of sitting down together and reading.

AMT: I've got some stats I just want to run by you according to a scholastic survey in 2017, only 16 percent of kids aged 9 to 11 in Canada are read to out loud day. Yet 93 percent of kids age 9 to 11 report they are reading the books for fun. Is there a benefit to encouraging them to be independent and doing it on their own?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: Yes I think there's room for both of these things. I mean I very much take the view that reading aloud is something that is of profound and delicious value from every point from infancy all the way up till the point that somebody is departing this world. It's not just something to do with children or little children or babies. In our family we always had this balance. There would always be read aloud time in the evening and then we had what was called private reading. And that was when you know people would be in their bedrooms doing their own reading for themselves. Funny that it has that sort of special title. But you know the various advantages of reading with older children who are capable of reading for themselves is that it's an opportunity to introduce them to books and concepts in language that they might not be able to tackle on their own. All of us use many fewer words in our normal speech let's say or what we might write, than we actually know. We have a capacity to understand very sophisticated language beyond our day to day use. And that's true of us. That's true of children as well. Even young children can understand texts that are pitched higher than they could read for themselves. And so one of the great gifts of reading to children, those who can read to themselves is that you allow them to kind of wander in these wonderful literary meadows where they might not be able to make their way on their own because they'd be fighting through the thickets of the vocabulary or the syntax.

AMT: How old is your youngest now?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: She is 13.

AMT: Do you still read aloud to her?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: I do. I do. I have a very very uneasy feeling that we may be moving to the end of this process. I was able to keep- one of my children stayed until she was 16. I kept my son I think he was 14-15 maybe at the very very latest. They don't always want it. I think it makes sense that children don’t want to be necessarily on the receiving end of things from their parents at a certain point, but they also come back. I've noticed when I am reading to the younger one sometimes the older ones - my three eldest are at college and at grads go but when they're at home. They'll come and sort of slip into the room and just be there for a while and nostalgically revisit the experience.

AMT: Because everyone likes to be renter even adults.

MEGHAN COX GURDON: Oh absolutely. And it's lovely with adults. That is something really I strongly urge people to give it a go. At an event the other day a couple came up to me. They'd been married for 43 years they said and they thought they were happy. And recently the husband had experienced some macular degeneration and couldn't read for himself so his wife had begun reading to him in the evenings. And they said how were so much happier. This is the happiest we've ever been. So on the strength of that I now insist on reading to my husband at night in the hopes that it will pay off for us too.

AMT: A Canadian after Gordon Korman has written about 80 books for children and teens. His latest is The Unteachables. He's shared his favourite memory of having a book read to him. Let's listen.

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I was actually in Grade 7 so it was really just a few months away from writing my first book, This can't be Happening at Macdonald Hall, but it sort of dropped off the reading habit. And my mom, who was an absolutely voracious reader, she kind of despaired and came up with a plan to get me back in the reading game. So we read together my first adult book. I mean I loved it. You know my spark for reading was kind of reignited. I was 12. You know I was reaching the point where you're doing less and less stuff with your family. You're kind of asserting your independence and your hero is doing something with my mom. I don't know if I could have read the book which was Kurt Vonnegut the Sirens of Titan, still one of my all-time favorites. I could have read it on my own but even if I could've, I definitely would not have appreciated it.

AMT: Okay so Meghan Cox Gurdon first of all you did hear that, he wrote his first published novel as a school assignment in Grade 7. So his exposure to literature had benefits but he talks about that bond that he found again. You're talking about the same ages with your kids and how it starts to change. You talk about how it starts to change a bit as they hit the tweens or the teens. Is there a point where it's too late to start or does that really does depend on the individual?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: You know I think it depends on the individual. I do know of cases where actually people I've talked to in the course of researching my book who were inspired by the idea. 'I had had forgotten. We loved to read together. I should start that again'. And I know in one case there was a wonderful result. The mother and daughter had stopped reading together when the child was eight and by the time I gave this idea I guess the child was 12, and they were very much at loggerheads, constantly fighting, mother daughter stuff. And it was a revelation to the two of them. They started reading together in the evening and they suddenly had this area in which they could have an encounter that was peaceful and mutually rewarding and rather lovely. And actually that just allows me to Segway if I may quickly to this idea of what reading aloud with teenagers is so useful for. Gordon Korman referred to this a little bit. I think that you don’t necessarily want to be tucked up close to your parents anymore, and you don’t necessarily have much you feel like you can talk to them about. On the same side for parents sometimes it can be difficult to make conversation you know, especially I would say with boys they get to that age where the conversation is fairly monosyllabic for a couple of years. And a work is a mode of encounter. It’s a bridge. It’s a place where the two of you can connect over a story, over language, over a shared experience without having the pressure to make conversation.

AMT: You know you mentioned one mother daughter. I have another clip I want you to hear. You had done an interview with CBC Maritime Noon last month and there was a lot of response from listeners who wanted to share their stories about reading out loud. And we got a piece of tape from that. This is Linda Ewart from St. John New Brunswick about reading to her 97 year old mother who had just come to stay with her after a hospital stay. Her mother died last year. Listen to her.

SOUNDCLIP

One afternoon as we were sitting talking. I happened to lock up in the bookcase and I found copies of Berge's bedtime stories which she used to read to us when we were children. So I just took one down just sort of said to her, kidding, because she had a great sense of humour. How about I read you a Berge's bedtime story and she said, yes, just emphatically you like this. So I thought, very good. So I started reading to her and I found that she calmed right down. She would wake at all hours and it was nothing for us to be setting up a three or four o'clock in the morning, with me reading about Sammy Jay or Billy Skunk, these types of stories to her. That time was so special with her because it was almost as if our roles were reversed. I felt so good at being able to comfort her. I couldn't remember many nights setting up with an earache when I was a small child and her sitting rocking me on her knee in the middle of the night. It just is just a feeling of peace that I get now.

AMT: What do you think of that Megan?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: UH, it's so moving it's so lovely. And that's exactly right. What she's describing. It really is a gift you can give someone, the role that reading can play when an adult child reads to an elderly parent or to a beloved elderly person. Life can be so lonely for people and it can be difficult to hold a book or see the book or engage with people. If a person lives alone or in care they may not have rich intellectual encounters with other adults. You know life can be so procedural and it maybe focused on medicinal all of the time. And exactly as she describes -that's a beautiful story - to use a book as the means of encounter and connection. And also it's like a way for the person, the older person let's say in this case or the hospitalized person. The sound of the other person's voice is like a ladder or a road that leads up out of the sort of solipsism of illness up into this kind of literary Meadow's, let's use that phrase again.

AMT: I love that literary meadows.

MEGHAN COX GURDON: Right where you can roam around and you can see things and you can feel things and revisit old memories and delight in beautiful language. It's just an irreplaceable gift and something I hope that anyone listening to this will run a quick catalogue of the people in your life who could use this kind of beauty and give it to them.

AMT: I want to talk a little bit about the oral tradition of storytelling and sharing. This is a favourite memory, not about a block. This is the Michael Kusugak who has written a dozen children's but but grew up in the Inuit oral storytelling tradition.

SOUNDCLIP

I had this grandmother who was my mother's mother. We used to go with them all the time and everywhere we went you know what I remember better than anything is, when I went to bed at night I would always say to my grandmother [indistinct language speech], 'grandmother please tell me your story'. She always said but I have no story to tell. And we went through this little routine back and forth back and forth until she finally said, okay settle down, I'll tell you a story. Some of the very first stories I remember were like nursery rhymes. All in Inuktitut. I was introduced to all these traditional stories that had been passed down from a long long time ago. And they're the inspirations for all my storytelling and writing that I do today.

AMT: I wonder what you think of oral stories passed down through generations, how important as that kind of storytelling?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: Oh it's beautiful. I think the great fortune of that gentleman to have access to that kind of a tradition in a very direct way is something wonderful. I mean oral storytelling is the oldest kind of storytelling. Narrative as we know is one of the great human universals. I love - Salman Rushdie has a phrase for it. He calls it the 'liquid tapestry of storytelling'. You know if you think of it as a tapestry that covers the earth, every human society has had these stories and that was the only way really for many many generations for stories to be handed down.

AMT: When did reading silently to ourselves rather than out loud become the norm?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: Interestingly enough of course oral storytelling was the way in which everything was passed along; archives and history and knowledge and stories. And then eventually mankind developed raiding. And writing was intended for many many centuries as a kind of means for liberating a text into the air as spoken as reading aloud. I mean all writing was intended to be read aloud, put it that way. Until the 10th century A.D. incredibly. So had we lived before that time, if we were to encounter a text we would know that the purpose of it was that we should look at it and see it and bring it into being. And it was after the 10th century A.D. that, slowly, reading privately to oneself making sense of the text in our mind, well just reading it without moving our lips, became the norm that we experienced today.

AMT: So what tips do you have for families who want to make a habit of reading out loud?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: The best thing to do is don’t feel like you have to be heroic. You know you don't have to start reading out loud for any enchanted hour every night for the rest of your life. Start today. Start small. Start where you are. I would suggest that families choose- let's say it's a mother or father who is thinking 'I want to do this'. Pick a time might be bed time. It might be after dinner or while people are eating their dessert or something like that. Some moment when people are together and just give it a go. Pick up a poem, something from the newspaper, even maybe a child's reading assignment for school that they may be having trouble with or you know that would be fun to read together. Just give it five minutes and then try to do the same thing you know the next day at the same time. And if my experience in that of many people I've talked to is any guide pretty quickly what starts out as a 'we should remember to do that kind of thing' turns into a 'ooh we get to do this kind of thing'.

AMT: Have you got any sort of offers that you think parents should read to kids?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: Oh gosh we are such fortunate people at this time in history. You know we have the vast quantities of new literature that's coming every year. The work of artists and writers. We also have all the riches of the past that we can choose from and we have the riches of each other’s traditions as it were. You know I make the argument in the book that every cultural tradition is the birth right of every child, because we are born into this world into this wonderful human experiment and we can read it from every type of writing and every kind of author and every kind of cultural tradition. And how great is that.

AMT: Has there been any books you just couldn't get through with your kids?

MEGHAN COX GURDON: [Laughs] I am almost afraid to say this on the air because I don’t want to be hated by anyone for not quite responding to J R R Talkien in the way that so many have. Yes my youngest daughter and I tried about a year and a half ago to read the first volume of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And, uh, Anna-Maria. We just couldn't do it. We just got bogged down in the landscape description. It just didn't work for us. And I really felt like a heel giving up on something that so many people, generations of people have absolutely adore, but it just didn't have for us the ignition power we needed.

AMT: She may pick it up on her own.

MEGHAN COX GURDON: I doubt it.

AMT: Well you know there are so many books I suppose as long as you are reading something that you enjoy. Someone else will read that you can read something else.

MEGHAN COX GURDON: Exactly right. That's exactly right.

AMT: Megan it's really good to talk to you. thank you.

MEGHAN COX GURDON: It's been a delight talking to you.

PC: Journalist Meghan Cox Gurdon is the children's book critic for the Wall Street Journal - and the author of The Enchanted Hour. She joined Anna Maria Tremonti from Washington, in March. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Today - You can catch Tom's interview with record producer David Foster. And remember - you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. After that conversation about the Enchanted Hour, let's end things off with music from the movie-adaptation of a beloved children's book. This is from the soundtrack to the 2009 Spike Jonze film, of Maurice Sendack's Where the Wild Things Are. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay. Thanks for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

Friday April 19, 2019 Full Transcript

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