Swimming in a sea of books (JE # 7)

Last weekend, the day after I read Edward Tulane to Adam and Violet, we gathered in the living room--we being the two children, myself and the rest of the "class": a gaggle of soft toys propped up in an arc around where I was sitting, Circle Time style.

I'd spread a few books out for them to explore, wondering what kinds of responses there would be when presented with more than one book. I also thought it might be a bit different, when recording experiences, to reading to them and might give me some insight into kids and books.

Both children like to read, and although I don't really know much about Violet's reading style or habits at home, I know her mother does indeed read to Violet, who enjoys the Fancy Nancy series. There has never been a time when I've offered to read to the pair of them that Violet has ever indicated disinterest, and at bedtime (at sleepovers) she often asks me to read to them.

This time the two children flipped through the books and giggled periodically after Violet asked, "Is this like station rotation with books?" Adam occasionally picked up his small tiger, Julie, and a little water baby doll, who has had several names, currently Baby, to show each a picture. I wondered if he were indicating based on their interests, since he showed different pictures to different friends. For himself, he tended to focus on Math Curse and All in Just One Cookie. We had received the latter in the mail just the day before and he'd spent nearly an hour repeating the title with different pronunciations ("All in. Just. One. Cookayyyy!") or different voices.

Violet, a first grader who knows how to read-and sometimes reads to Adam--asked me to read the title of a book she indicated.

"The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales," I said with a stress as if I were reading it for the very first time.

Both children howled with laughter. When I listened later to the tape, Adam's deep belly laugh in of itself made me giggle. There really is nothing like children's laughter.

They repeated the name over and over again, seemingly delighting in the ability to say stupid uncensored, and I remembered reading in the text about objectionable phrases and varying responses depending on families' perspectives, values, etc. I asked them what they thought of the title.

Was it funny to say the word stupid?

"Yeah, but we couldn't say it in class," Violet said in a warning voice.

"Well," Adam chimed in, "only when you're just reading it."

Do you think there are some times when you might be able to say the word stupid?”

“Yeah."

"What might be one of those times?"

“Stupid Tales.” Violet wanted to get back into the conversation.

"When you’re reading the title of a book?"

“Yeah."

“What if the word stupid is in a book?”

“Um...”

“Would you be able to say it out loud?”

“Hey this isn’t a stupid tale!”

“What if you were reading a book to us and someone, a character in the book, said, "You are so stupid." Would you stop or would you keep reading to us? Would you read those words out loud?”

"Keep reading,” called out the children in unison.

The children, while not exactly bored with this conversation, didn't seem to find it unusual. It wasn't really one that piqued their interest and Violet began commenting on some pictures she'd seen, flipping through a book as we chatted. "Oh my god, he's in his normal clothes!"

"All in Just One Cookie!" cried Adam.

"He's like, 'Whatever.'" (She might have been looking at Terrific. I had been somewhat swept away by our text's many recommen-
dations and made a trip to the library.)

"They're trying to build a cookie. They're trying to cook it."

Violet was thumbing through Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich and we talked briefly about how many people think Frankenstein is the monster, when actually his creator is called Dr. Frankenstein. She pointed to a picture of a barber: "Is that Dr. Frankenstein?"

After this the children flipped through other books and Adam ran to get a library choice of his own, Josie and the Pussycats. I don't know what attracted him to it, but perhaps the comic-book style. I pointed out to the children the differences between the words in this books and those in All in Just One Cookie. I had previously explained the bubbles to Adam, and this time he repeated the words in Cookie as they appeared over a map. (He loves maps.) I asked him what he thinks it mans to see "chocolate" with a line pointing towards one place, and "eggs" with a line pointing to another, and so on.

"It's telling you where you can find the stuff."

After another brief sentence about boxes with words in them compared to bubbles with words, we talked again about the difference in what it means and also how it appears. This time I let the children do the explaining. They would both be good teachers of this stuff, I recall thinking.

Since they had two books open I chose the moment also to talk about pictures and differences, such as faces being rounded in one book, elongated in another. Style. "Different but both nice," Violet added.

Teachers.