September 12, 2002
Today I read to my son’s Catholic school kindergarten for the first time. Two weeks ago I volunteered to read to his class for half an hour each Thursday morning. At the orientation meeting for the parent readers for all grades (K-8), every other parent in attendance was female, and about half the comments those other parents made during the meeting were geared specifically towards the best way to read to kindergartners. I don’t know if that’s because they were as surprised to have a Dad in their midst as I was to be the only Dad in their midst, or whether they were just as concerned for the woman who would read to the kindergarten on Tuesday mornings because we were both first-timers. Either way, several volunteered to share the books they’d had the best response to in past years, but I had a few ideas of my own and decided to wait a week or three before trying someone else’s.
So, over the past two weeks I’ve been going through my kids’ voluminous library, acquired either through inheritance from other parents whose kids had outgrown them, through gifts from other friends and family members who know our high regard for good books, or through our own trips through bookstores and garage sales over the past ten years. I picked out four books I was pretty sure the kids would like, which might last through two half-hour sessions.
The class began. I introduced myself to the 18 children sitting in a rough semicircle in front of me, then Liz, the kindergarten teacher, asked the kids if they knew who I was.
“Yes!” four of them shouted, almost in unison, “He’s Liam’s Daddy!”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Because he looks exactly like him!” they shouted again, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
The teacher went off to her staff meeting a minute later and I opened the first book, The Last Snake in Ireland. Before I had a chance to flip two pages, and before the snakes in the book had even begun to start crawling down St. Patrick’s green cliff to the sea, hands started going up.
“Yes?” I said.
“Me and my Mommy and Daddy went camping and we saw a ‘water snake’!”, said one girl sitting right in front of me, meaning, I think, that she had seen a rattlesnake.
“I saw a garter snake, and it was a wild one!” said a boy in the back.
“Wow!” I said. “That’s cool!”
“I saw two garter snakes!” said the same boy.
“Are they sea serpents?” another girl asked, looking at the picture on the next page.
“You’ll find out soon,” I said, wondering how long the questions would continue and what I’d gotten myself into.
“My friend says there’s a sea monster in a lake,” said another girl.
“The cobra is the king of the snakes!” said an enthusiastic boy.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” said another.
“I saw a boa constrictor at the zoo that could eat a person!” said yet another, and the questions got farther and farther away from the book after that. About three minutes and a dozen questions later, in a brief lull as the number of raised hands dwindled to two, I told them it was time to start reading the book again, answered the remaining two, and continued.
Half the book and several more requests to go to the bathroom passed quickly, the kids as sucked into the story as I was in doing my best to affect an Irish accent when the one remaining snake in Ireland and St. Patrick spoke to one another.
As St. Patrick was finally about to get the snake to jump into his entrapping box, after having chased him across the breadth of Ireland, one more boy asked “Why does he want to do that?” and after I explained, he repeated the question in the exact same tone of voice. One answer and two pages later, the children all laughed as the snake, now snug in the box, fell into the waters of Loch Ness and St. Patrick told him he’d be back to get him tomorrow, just as they’d laughed at the beginning when the snakes were teasing St. Patrick’s old lame dog Finbar. The kids loved the ending as much as I always love telling it, and a few more questions about sea serpents and monsters later, we started the second book, The Clown of God. This time we read three pages before hands began rising.
“I saw someone juggling!”
“I saw a guy at the circus jump through hoops!”
“Is he an orphan?”
“We went to Sirk … Sirk … Cirque du Soleil!”
Two more pages and they drew back their breath at the thought of juggling burning torches, then the questions began anew.
“Is it dangerous to juggle burning torches?”
“Plates on sticks are dangerous!”
“I saw burning sticks on Lilo and Stitch!”
“We have that movie!”
Five minutes of questions ensued as the kids began moving more restlessly, with no end of raised hands in sight. Finally I cut off the flow, even while several hands were still raised. I began affecting an Italian accent as little Giovanni negotiated his passage away from Sorrento with the Maestro. The second book was more interactive than the first, with kids asking questions sometimes even without raising hands, and me answering them offhand if I could do so in a second or two. Several shushes were needed. Next time, I won’t be answering so many questions, I think.
“Why did they throw things at him?” one boy asked, as Giovanni became an old man.
That needed a little explaining. And re-explaining, but afterwards the children were quieter. “Who is the Holy Child?” I asked a few pages later, as his statue made its first appearance in the story.
“The baby Jesus!” cried several children.
Then, as his birthday was first mentioned, I asked “When is that?” and several of the same children cried out “The baby Jesus!” again. One girl raised her hand, and when called upon replied “Christmas!” The children quieted again at this, seemingly impressed. Several pages without questions followed. Into the air went Giovanni’s sticks, plates, clubs, rings, and rainbow of balls. “And what came next?” I asked.
No answers. After a few seconds, my son put his hand up. “Yes, Liam?” I said.
“The sun in the heavens,” he said, smiling broadly.
“That’s right!” I said, happy he’d had a chance to answer a question on his own, even as the youngest child in the class.
The Principal’s voice came on over the intercom. St. Catherine’s Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance followed, with the childrens’ hands first piously together and then reverently over their heart. Several minutes of announcements followed, while Liz returned. I worried that I wasn’t going to be able to finish the book. Maybe the kids did too.
“Three more pages,” I said to her when the announcements were finally over, and she nodded. I continued, relieved, and old Giovanni fell dead to the floor, prompting several more questions, and then came the ending.
“How did that happen?” one girl asked.
“It was a miracle,” I replied.
“It’s a miracle!” a boy said, seeming to purposely mimic the tagline to a TV commercial that must have finished airing 10 years before he was even born.
But it did feel like a miracle.
———-
The Last Snake in Ireland, 1999, by Sheila MacGill-Callahan, illustrated by Will Hillenbrand.
The Clown of God, 1978, an old story told and illustrated by Tomie dePaola
A Dad Goes to Kindergarten 