The Second-Born

When my son was five, the kid was on a highly age-appropriate television regimen of Sesame Street and Backyardigans or, if we were feeling really liberal with his viewing habits, maybe a flick like Cars. The wildest material we read was Charlotte's Web. His diet of literature and television was wholesome through and through, the equivalent of kale chips and seven grain bread for snack time.

Seconda is now almost five and yesterday she walked into her PreK classroom donning a white lace high-necked gown with purple tulle underneath, very Madonna circa 1983, wearing lipstick and clutching an Easy Reader copy of The Phantom of the Opera. In my defense, I'd convinced her to slip on a gray wool cardigan over the dress which brought it down a few notches of crazy, and I tried to wipe the lipstick off but it had already stained her lips, being a bright red Brucci.

She was super-excited to show her teachers and friends her outfit - she was dressed up as the Phantom's beloved, Christine -- and the book.

"This is my favorite part!" she exclaimed to her teacher, pointing to the illustrations, "Christine rips off Phantom's mask and then he becomes furious and makes her dig her nails into his skin and screams, 'Try to tear my face off!!!!'"

I laughed nervously and directed her to the reading nook where we could peruse the inappropriate reading material privately.

"Read it to me Mommy!" Sec demanded.

And so, as softly as I could, I did. I hadn't read the book before -- had bought it for Primo for his birthday since he loves all things spooky and hey, it is classic literature and promotes a love of literature. Plus, I'm familiar with the story and its not that racy or violent, as I recall. A fallen chandelier. A deformed face. But that passes for tame with kids these days. No sex, drugs or rock n' roll or anything.

I should have given the book a quick read though before I handed it over to the kids because as I turned out, I wasn't all that familiar with the original story.

Recently, Primo read the book at bedtime and the next day I asked him about it and he gave me a quick summary:

"Well, the Phantom, whose real name is Erik, joins a freak show when he is a kid and there's this guy who makes friends with the Phantom and saves his life by pretending another person's corpse is the Phantom's corpse so he can sneak him out of the freak show. And then Erik makes a house under the opera and he builds a torture chamber where he puts his enemies and then he falls in love with Christine and tries to murder her boyfriend Raoul and then he kills himself."

I was pretty sure the kid was getting some of those details wrong, had gotten confused along the way. His reading's not perfect and who knows? He probably made up half that stuff. Torture chambers? Freak shows? Sounded a little . . . far-fetched.

But I learned the truth as I read a chapter to Seconda at PreK drop off, to a growing audience of four year-olds. I tried to keep a low profile but somehow the kids knew we were reading a banned book and they flocked over.

"Behold my death-face!' cried Erik," I read, ""I am very handsome, am I not? The hole for my nose! The dark rings around my tiny yellow eyes! The sunken maw of my mouth!' He grabbed Christine's hands and dug her nails into his flesh. 'Maybe this skeleton face is a mask too! Why don't you try to tear it off!!!'"

That's some bleak shit.

By the time we got up to the Phantom giving Christine a tour of his underground lair, complete with the coffin he sleeps in and the - yes, Primo was right - torture chamber, I decided we'd read just about enough to persuade the teachers and other parents that I was a completely unfit mother. Great, just great. Here I won't let the kids watch Sponge Bob or ICarly and I am reading to them about people committing suicide and faking their own death to escape being circus slaves.

Sometimes I'm blinded by the title "classics of literature." We all make errors in judgement. But it wouldn't hurt for these ""Easy" Readers to have a parent advisory label on them.

As God as my witness, I'll never read Mittens again

Which is to say: a list of easy reader books which don't prompt you to knock yourself unconscious:

Elephant and Piggie

These are, by far, my very favorite, and Primo’s too, because they are freaking hilarious. Like, they stand on tiher own as picture books, too. And I read them to Seconda, who gets a total kick out of them, too. Besides being hilarious, the language is really simple which helps to keep morale up, and there is tons of repetition, -- not in a Seuss-y way, because it doesn’t rhyme, but in a Meisner way. I keep feeling like I’m back in acting class:

“I love the rain!”

“You love the rain?”

There are very few words on each page which keeps us truning pages at a nice clip, making Primo feel a sense of accomplishment,and giving him new illustrations to look at.

PLUS, one huge advantage I’ve found with these is that because it is all dialogue between the two characters, it works perfectly to perform as a play. So when Primo is feel particularly resistant to literacy, I can get him interested by telling him we’ll perform it as a play for Daddy and Sec, complete with props. It also makes the task more acheavable because he only has to reads half of the dialogue. Because the characters often yell at each other and have really broad facial expressions, it’s a fun play to put on. And then he’s read a book without even noticing, If only one of plays would include Piggie eating a plate of spinach, we’d be all set.

All Things Seuss

I feel like you love Seuss or he annoys the shit out of you. I love him, and Primo does too. Green Eggs and Ham is a favorite of his to read. One Fish Two Fish is good too and the Cat in the Hat, of course. Only trouble is, there’s a lot of text on each page, and the books are fairly long for beginner readers so he gets a little overwhelmed by how long it takes him to get through a page and loses momentum.

You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You

You can make any book a “you read to me, I’ll read to you book” by alternating lines. This fact is not lost on me. But I found one of these series at the Strand and since it was “spooky tales to read together” (Primo’s still nuts about spooks) and it cost under $4, I bought it. As it truns out, Mary Ann Hoberman, the stellar children’s poet, penned it, and the son of our favorite illustrator and drawing-book-auhor, Michael Emberley, did the pictures, so we were extra psyched. Primo loves the fact that the book was MEANT to be read by two people – so that it was required for us to share the load of the reading. Everything rhymes which really helps the beginner reader to figure words out, and the poems are all spooky and gross and creepy, just the way my brood like it.

Meg and Mog Books

These aren’t easy readers per se but a fantastic series of picture books from England about a crazy witch and her motley crew. The illustrations are so bold bright you feel like you’re having a hallucination, and that’s reason enough for me to crack it open. Simple text, fun stories.

As God as my witness, I’ll never read Mittens again.

I'd rather bang my head against a wall then listen to another Easy Reader

Hotdamn, its hard to learn to read. It is so freaking hard, in fact, that I don't know how anybody manages to do it. Seriously, as I write this, I am in awe of the fact that I know how to spell the word “spell” and that you know how to read it, and understand what meaning I intended when I typed it.

What I’m saying is that if you are reading these words now, you are a genius! And yes, I am one too. Not only are we genius, we are industrious, patient and full of faith. Because it takes all those qualities to learn how to read. This is what I’ve learned from my five year-old.

Much to my surprise, Primo has been totally uninterested in learning how to read. I thought he’d be the kind of kid that taught himself by the age of 3 by studying the cereal box, but I see now that was insane. I see that reading is hard, even for semi-brilliant children. And the English language has begun to annoy me too, because so much of it is not only non-phonetic but just stupid.

Like the way “k” is weirdly silent sometimes, as in “know” and “knock.”

And the inscrutable pronunciation of “ough” as in “through” and “furlough” (hey, screw you if you’re thinking what easy-reader has the word “furlough” in it – YOU think of another “ough” word.).

Even the way you say “one” is aggravating. Who would guess that’s how you say it?

An vowels. Good God, how are we ever supposed to figure out which exact sound the “i”s or the “e”s make. It’s EXHUASTING having to explain it: I can’t even imagine how exhausting it is having to learn and remember it.

Nonetheless, I have been forcing Primo to read a few pages of an easy-reader book almost every night, continually reminding him that the more he does it, the easier it will be. I don’t blame him for hating it. I hate it too. It’s fucking boring to listen to “Mittens flaps his tail./ Mittens hits the ball./ Mittens hears a noise./ What’s that Mittens?” especially when the reading of those mind-bendingly boring words takes ten minutes. I try to keep things suspenseful by commenting on the action of the book but it’s near-impossible.

“Oh, Primo! What do you think it is that Mittens hears?”

My son gives me a look that says, “I’m not an idiot. I just can’t read yet.”

“It’s a dog, Mommy.”

“Well, maybe but let’s turn the page and find out!”

I am tempted to just crack open The Iliad and have him learn to read with that. I mean, can I really ask my literature-lover to slum it with this awful I-can-read shit?