Week 2

Week 2, September 19, 2002

The kids seem to have gotten accustomed to the idea of a Dad reading to them, because my second experience with them was nothing like the first. Most obviously, they hardly offered up anything close to the number of questions and comments they did last week. For another, they paid less attention to me and more to their friends. This could have been a function of the books I chose this week being less interesting, but I actually think it had more to do with the novelty of being read to having worn off.

The day started innocently enough. One child asked me if I would be reading to them every week, I said “yes”, and I jumped right into the first book, “The Remarkable Farkle McBride”, with it’s familiar A.A. Milne-inspired cadences and rhymes, and they seemed highly interested in the idea of wee Farkle alternately mastering and disgustedly discarding one symphonic instrument after another. The picture of a trombone in a garbage can seemed to fill them with a most particular glee, and the idea of now 10-year-old Farkle banging away on a full drum kit even sparked a few contributions.

“My brother plays the drums!”

“We have a drum!”

The last page’s fold-out brought another flurry of comments.

“Your book is broken!”

“It’s ripped!”

“No, you’ll see,” I promised, then read the words from what appeared to be nothing but curtains, and finally folded back the leaves to reveal the double-wide page showing the entire orchestra with a beaming Farkle in its center.

“Oooh!” several kids actually said, and “Wow!”, and several even laughed.

“His head is really big!” one observed.

“It looks like it’s going to explode!” said another. I can hardly wait to bring in “The Five Chinese Brothers”.

On a roll, I brought out “Bill and Pete”, a whimsical book that I’d brought the previous week in case I needed another to fill my half hour. This week it looked like I would need a third book.

Then one girl asked to go to the bathroom. I noticed the line in the corner of the room for a drink of water, four deep and getting impatient. The first boy in the line had plugged the sink and was playing with the water rather than taking a drink. A minor verbal intervention later and the bottleneck returned to his seat, with the other kids quickly following after taking their drinks. Two girls were talking with each other, ignoring shushes from me. Later I learned that shushing isn’t recommended, since it doesn’t seem to do any good. Next week I’ll know so much more.

I started the book and the kids stayed with me for the first few pages without much more trouble, though there was definitely a good deal of whispering going on. When we reached the part where Ms. Ibis asked her class to recite the alphabet, I asked the kids if they could do it, too, and every single blessed one of them launched immediately into the alphabet song, even to the “Now I know my ABCs, next time won’t you sing with me” kicker. When Mama crocodile said “That was beautiful” on the next page, I had a hard time keeping from beaming. But then I started to lose them. A few pages later, when the little crocs started spelling their names, I got some back.

“His daddy’s name is Tom,” said one boy, about another.

“I have a friend named Amy,” said a girl.

And then I lost them again. Several more shushes didn’t help, and without my noticing it, the same boy who’d been playing with the water earlier had gotten up and started doing so again, and this time he wouldn’t come back until I went and got him, ignoring me until I actually touched him. I had to separate two girls who wouldn’t stop talking to each other, and one boy was poking several of the kids sitting around him, so I had to move him, too. Speaking the caution by the old crocodile in an old man’s voice went unheeded. So, too, did the bad guy’s capture of young Bill the kindergarten crocodile and even his thought bubble that contained what I thought was a very cute depiction of a green suitcase with a cartoon crocodile’s snout, feet, and tail. Even the sight of Bill improbably climbing straight up the garden wall didn’t help. But the sight of the bad guy’s bare bottom as he fled across the sand to Cairo did spin their heads around, one by one, and actually brought them back, laughing and waiting for another page as outrageous, for the rest of the book.

Unfortunately for all, that was the last page they found interesting from that book, and the third book I read to them, “Ferdinand”, which I remembered fondly from my youth, sailed straight over their heads. I had to interrupt the reading several times to keep the kids quiet and in reasonably good behavior, though the site of the bull’s bulging eyes as it was stung by the bumblebee drew chuckles from some of the few who were still paying attention.

Afterwards I was very discouraged, and even my wife’s encouraging statements that the kids will be easier as the year goes on seemed faint reward.

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“The Remarkable Farkle McBride”, 2000, by John Lithgow, illustrated by C.F. Payne.

“Bill and Pete”, 1978, story and pictures by Tomie de Paola.

“Ferdinand”, 1936, by Munro Leaf, drawings by Robert Lawson