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Musings: Reading An Old Favorite With New Eyes

I’m still reading Watership Down with my daughter. I wrote before about how she predicted future elements of the plot based on previous knowledge (which I love to see with my educator’s heart), but now I want to write about how reading this aloud with her has affected me as a reader. If you read my previous post, you know this is one of my favorite books. I first read it, by myself, when I was maybe a year older than she is now, and over the past many years, I have read it over and over (although this is the first time in many years that I’ve picked it up). I know the plot and what to expect, but as an adult, having wider experience of the world, its impact doesn’t hit me as hard. And of course because I read it to myself and not with an adult to discuss it with me, I missed a lot on my first time through, especially because the structure is a little confusing, with stories inside stories.

As I explained before, she predicted some pretty unsettling elements of the book, and was excited to see if she was right. She was even waiting impatiently for the reveal. And then we reached it, but the thing is, intellectually knowing what is probably going to happen (she was still debating whether the rabbits in the new warren were cannibals or planned to sacrifice our brave band of adventurers) is different when things start happening, suddenly, to characters you’ve grown to love. Because I already previously spoiled this for you, I’ll say that a greatly-loved, if rather brusque member of our adventuring group is caught by surprise in what will probably be an unsurprising way to any adult reading this, but OH MY GOD it is terrifying, because the witnesses don’t actually see what’s happening but we, the readers, know this is the moment. And when the witnesses do see, because they’re rabbits, they see the peril, and they see what has happened to their friend, but they don’t have the ability to understand what is happening and they don’t know what to do. They are horrified and frozen by what they see. And as readers we have a choice– we can step back and look at the big picture, knowing what is probably going to happen and dreading it– or we can experience it through the rabbits’ eyes, trying to solve the problem without knowing what’s going on even as they are witnessing the terrible thing that is happening right in front of them. The smallest one, Fiver, rushes to the warren to say what has happened, and while our band of adventurers immediately gather and run to their friend, the warren rabbits ignore him, and when he tries to get their attention, they attack him.

Once the immediate crisis has ended, Fiver pulls all the facts together to explain to them why the warren rabbits refused to help (he is a very intuitive creature). An experienced reader has probably figured the situation out by this point, but the average rabbit (and maybe the first time reader who saw the story through the rabbits’ eyes) needs it laid out to them. It’s at this point that my daughter emerged from whatever deep place the story had taken her. Once she understood what had actually occurred (that one of her predictions was correct) she could go the step further that the author never does (because this, after all, is a tale of rabbit adventure and not a deep philosophical discussion) and say “How could the warren rabbits pretend nothing was happening? Why did they stay? How could they be so cruel?”  As a first time reader who lived the experience through the eyes of the rabbits, and felt it with them,  and then stopped to think about it, the cruelty, indifference, and unfairness of the warren rabbits are something she felt on not just an intellectual level, as an adult or experienced reader might, but on a visceral level. And yet at the end, that same deepness of feeling also showed her, and me through her, the power of mercy and of hope.

Don’t you sometimes feel jaded by the experiences you’ve lived through in this world? You learn that “nature is red in tooth and claw”, that unfairness and cruelty exist in the world everywhere, that people will sometimes turn their backs on those in need if there’s benefit to themselves, that there’s a willingness out there to trade freedom for security. Some kids learn those things the hard way, by living it, but there are some who are protected from having to know those things, until, for the first time, they see the world through rabbits’ eyes. Reading aloud doesn’t just benefit them. It peels back the layers between how so many of us now see the world, and the sharp vision and powerful feelings our children possess.

There are many reasons to read aloud to children: to teach them how stories work, to introduce them to new ideas and new worlds, to help them increase vocabulary, to learn to read with both fluency and comprehension, to engage them in reading independently, to help build emotional bonds, to prepare them to participate effectively in democracy and society. All of these are so important. I can’t emphasize enough the power of reading (and if you have a child of any age who says they’re too old for reading aloud, keep in mind that I read to my husband, as well as my children, until the night before he died).

But here is something many, many of us don’t take into consideration. The benefits of reading aloud are not one-way. There are reasons for adults to read aloud with children, and a very important reason is that is allows us to see our own world with new eyes and a refreshed heart.

Editor’s note: Next up, back to horror fiction. I promise.

Posted on March 25, 2017 by , Reply

Musings: I Want To Be A Monster When I Grow Up by M.T. Weber

I Want To Be A Monster When I Grow Up by M.T. Weber
Pint Bottle Press, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1945005961
Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Sometimes a book comes along that really hits the mark. In my family, this picture book did exactly that, just as soon as I took it out of the box and read through it for the first time. My initial impression was that the art had an inexpert look, and the font looked like it had been printed on a dot matrix printer– a little primitive for today (a second look made me realize that the font size and darkness made the simple text much more readable than many other picture books I’ve seen, and the monsters are lovingly depicted with bright colors that make them stand out from the page). Once I started reading, though, it melted something inside me.

I Want To Be A Monster When I Grow Up is a gently affectionate, funny, and loving portrait of the relationship between Hudson, a monster-loving kid and his mother. Hudson’s joy and excitement about monsters is an accurate picture of a little boy who really loves them, and his mother, obviously a savvy mom who enjoys sharing her own love of scary stories, is able to direct his enthusiasm into positive behavior and life choices (like eating vegetables, sharing, and brushing teeth). As a mom who loves scary stories and reading aloud, and has a monster-loving 11 year old who is “too cool” to have Mom read aloud to him anymore, this couldn’t have done a better job of catching me and making me remember what it’s like to have that time of reading aloud with an excited little kid with a love of learning, and his contagious excitement of discovering for the first time something you love and want to share. I had to take it up to my own monster kid, who was already in bed, and read it to him right away. And he listened, and smiled, and I saw a little of that little boy enthusiasm again as he snuggled up to me and gave me a hug while I read aloud to him for the first time in a long time.

If you or your kids think that there is a stage where they outgrow picture books, or you reading aloud to them, I’m happy to tell you that you are wrong. There is always a time for that. Reading aloud brings us closer together, and I Want To Be A Monster When I Grow Up is a book that inspires this. For any monster-loving mom who is raising a Monster Kid, or any Monster Kid with a monster-loving mom, regardless of age, you couldn’t choose a better book. Recommended.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski


Posted on January 7, 2017 by , 1 comment

The Tenth Good Thing About Barney: Reading Aloud With a Child

I have been doing a little academic research into children’s literature and horror recently, and one of the things I’ve seen mentioned multiple times is that children’s literature is different that any other kind, because it’s really written with adults in mind. Let me explain.

It’s mostly adults who write children’s books. Adults decide what books are appropriate for publication for children, edit them, and market them. Adults are the ones who usually buy them. And adults decide how and where they should be made available. Many children’s books are written well beyond the capacity of  the child to read the book independently… so most children’s books, for many years, are also read by, or with adults, to children.

As adults, we have too much of a past to experience a children’s book in the same way a child does, and our roles in the present also change the way we look at them. And that affects the reading experience children have when we read aloud with them.

My mom bought a book containing a variety of stories meant for reading aloud with a child. It’s a strange collection, really, and includes The Shrinking of Treehorn by Florence Parry Heide and The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. My five year old daughter pulled this book out, opened it to the middle and said “I want this one.” She had chosen The Tenth Good Thing About Barney, a picture book by Judith Viorst about a boy grieving for his cat, who has just died. It’s often recommended for use with children when talking about death. Not really a feel good bedtime story. Even though I’ve never had a cat, I tear up at the end. I said, “This is a very sad story. Are you sure you want me to read it?” She did. And so I read it to her. And for her it wasn’t sad. She made a connection between Barney, the cat in the story, and Picky-picky, Ramona Quimby’s cat (in Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books), who dies in the movie, but she wasn’t sad. And the next night at bedtime she wanted it again. And so did her brother. I warned him that it could be sad, but he still wanted to hear it, so I read it again. And it wasn’t sad for him. As an adult who knows how this book is supposed to be used, I didn’t really feel the need for my kids to hear the story. As a mom, I was afraid it would make them sad, and maybe scared, so that it would be hard to go to sleep. And I have heard a few questions about cats and about death in the last day or so, but nothing that seems to make them sad, or scared, or worried. Keeping it away from them because of my own worries, fears, and preconceptions seems, in this case, like it would have been kind of selfish. They don’t appear to have been damaged by the experience, and maybe it has made their lives richer. I think that goes for a lot of books that people worry about putting in the hands of children. I am glad that I didn’t say more than that this was a sad story. Even that gives them a frame that is not their own for understanding what the story means for them.

Reading aloud to children, and with children, is a joy, a pleasure, and sometimes a frustration. And it’s also a responsibility, not just as adults reading for thirty minutes at night with them so they’ll grow up to be independent readers with a love of stories and books (or at least children who can pass the I-READ exam). It is a responsibility, because by what we choose to share and how we feel about children’s books, as adults, as professionals, and as former children, we have the ability to change the way our children see and feel about a book that so very many adults wanted to put into their hands. Once it’s in their hands, though, children can change the book for us, as well.  Reading aloud  with a child alters the world. That’s something to keep in mind.

 

Posted on January 8, 2013 by , Reply
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