 Before you can read to a child, you have to pick out a book. There are four essential elements to consider when choosing a book to read to children. Your enthusiasm for the book, the age of your audience, the book's illustrations, and the book's content. I start by picking a book that I love to read. Because if I love to read it, then I'm going to read it better to the children. If I'm enthusiastic about a story, then that gets the children involved. They know that if I'm really excited, then that kind of gets them excited and they want to hear the story. When you pick out a book that you like, the children will catch your enthusiasm, and the experience will be fun, playful, and exciting. You must also make sure that the book is age-appropriate. If the children cannot identify with the story, or if the subject is not appropriate for them, the story will not be effective. The illustrations in the book are also important. You want to take into consideration the size and the style of the illustrations in the book, particularly if the group of children is larger. You want to make sure that everybody can see the illustrations. Lastly, you need to look at the content of the book. Books with repetitive phrases, rhyming words, or a variety of emotions will help you and your audience have more fun with the story. You want to pick a story that has some fun elements, and it's like something exciting or something a little sad, where you can really get into the story and change your voice and change the pacing of the story to keep it interesting. Once you've selected your book, you need to prepare to read it. As with anything, the best way to assure that you're ready is to practice. Quite often we read something silently, and the words sound beautiful to us, but when we try to get those same words out of our mouth, we trip our tongues up, and so it's important to read it aloud to hear how it sounds, how it feels in your mouth. So you're prepared before you read it to them.