reading update
There's a small library growing in our mailroom. It's filling with dog-eared copies of The Magic Treehouse1, WhereThe Sidewalk Ends and Where The Wild Things Are. Some of them have been donated by co-workers with children who've outgrown these books, others have been bought by my peers in the reading program who, in a burst of enthusiasm, raided the Borders bookstore across the street and came back with armloads of children's stories and heads filled with ideas about what they wanted to teach the students that we've been assigned. Our marketing events coordinator picked up books on baseball ballerinas and female explorers because she thinks the world needs more tomboys. One of our developers has been reading space stories to his kid. We've been in the program for less than a month and already we're thinking in the possessive. "My first-grader", "My boy" It's like having a son for an hour, and in our conversations you could almost hear the echoes of parental aspirations, hoping that a kid might grow up to be an astronomer because you read him a copy of The Magic School Bus Explores The Solar System.
I was outside with Jay, waiting for our ride to take us to the school, and he asked me why I wasn't bringing in any books. "LittleReaderThatCould likes to pick books from the library," I said, "last couple of times I brought something, he's already read it or seen the film."
That was what happened when I brought The Little Engine That Could and he said, "I saw this on video last week." I read the first paragraph to him and he said that it was different from the movie, and I replied, "well, a story can be different depending on whether it's told in a book or in a movie. It's called 'adaptation'."
"Is that like when my mom read Sleeping Beauty to me and the witch didn't turn into a dragon in the book?"
"Yeah. Sometimes movies have to make things more exciting, so they'll change or add stuff."
"But which one is best?" (heh, a deconstructionist in the making)
"whichever one you liked best. All stories have some kind of truth: a girl who is good and is better than her wicked stepsisters; a boy who is heroic because he is always trying hard to fulfill his promises. All of the other stuff, the dragons they fight and the name of their fairy godmother, and the color of their horse, that can change, but the meaning stays the same."
(and when you're older, kid, I'm going to tell you about this thing called semiotics2)
I've tried to restrain the urge to mold the boy -- a childhood spent living up to other people's expectations have given me an aversion to that sort of thing -- and so usually, when I see him, we'll walk through the library scanning through the literature and letting him decide on what he wants us to read. Or at least, I'll try to let him decide. This program has also turned into a minor indulgence of mine to read old children's stories that I somehow skipped out on when I was growing up in the Philippines. That explains why I half nudged him in Kipling's direction this week. It's the sort of book that I'd read in a library or bookstore, but something that I could never bring myself to purchase, and it's still read from the twenty year old perspective -- with the curiosity and humor and the irony, but without the childish sense of wonder and discovery.
I forget that "cetacean" and "sagacity" are Big Words and that there's both a challenge in pronouncing them properly and satisfaction in understanding what they mean. I forget what it's like to be on the cusp of worldliness, and to open a book of legends that you might be discovering for the first time. I forget what it's like to read those stories when they're still new and the blank spaces between the words are waiting to be filled with the details of your imagination.
That's what I get to rediscover when I read to this boy, and when he looks up at me after I finish explaining the names of Egyptian gods and he says to me, "you know a lot about the world outside, don't you?" I can't help but hope that the wonder never leaves him.
1 btw, msjen, you were right. He is already familiar with the Treehouse series. Apparently he's already reading them to the rest of his friends.
2 and, I have to say Google Definitions rock
I was outside with Jay, waiting for our ride to take us to the school, and he asked me why I wasn't bringing in any books. "LittleReaderThatCould likes to pick books from the library," I said, "last couple of times I brought something, he's already read it or seen the film."
That was what happened when I brought The Little Engine That Could and he said, "I saw this on video last week." I read the first paragraph to him and he said that it was different from the movie, and I replied, "well, a story can be different depending on whether it's told in a book or in a movie. It's called 'adaptation'."
"Is that like when my mom read Sleeping Beauty to me and the witch didn't turn into a dragon in the book?"
"Yeah. Sometimes movies have to make things more exciting, so they'll change or add stuff."
"But which one is best?" (heh, a deconstructionist in the making)
"whichever one you liked best. All stories have some kind of truth: a girl who is good and is better than her wicked stepsisters; a boy who is heroic because he is always trying hard to fulfill his promises. All of the other stuff, the dragons they fight and the name of their fairy godmother, and the color of their horse, that can change, but the meaning stays the same."
(and when you're older, kid, I'm going to tell you about this thing called semiotics2)
I've tried to restrain the urge to mold the boy -- a childhood spent living up to other people's expectations have given me an aversion to that sort of thing -- and so usually, when I see him, we'll walk through the library scanning through the literature and letting him decide on what he wants us to read. Or at least, I'll try to let him decide. This program has also turned into a minor indulgence of mine to read old children's stories that I somehow skipped out on when I was growing up in the Philippines. That explains why I half nudged him in Kipling's direction this week. It's the sort of book that I'd read in a library or bookstore, but something that I could never bring myself to purchase, and it's still read from the twenty year old perspective -- with the curiosity and humor and the irony, but without the childish sense of wonder and discovery.
I forget that "cetacean" and "sagacity" are Big Words and that there's both a challenge in pronouncing them properly and satisfaction in understanding what they mean. I forget what it's like to be on the cusp of worldliness, and to open a book of legends that you might be discovering for the first time. I forget what it's like to read those stories when they're still new and the blank spaces between the words are waiting to be filled with the details of your imagination.
That's what I get to rediscover when I read to this boy, and when he looks up at me after I finish explaining the names of Egyptian gods and he says to me, "you know a lot about the world outside, don't you?" I can't help but hope that the wonder never leaves him.
1 btw, msjen, you were right. He is already familiar with the Treehouse series. Apparently he's already reading them to the rest of his friends.
2 and, I have to say Google Definitions rock