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.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Like-a-Reads

A year or two ago, someone gave us the first three Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, and at that time, Primo was still struggling through Frog and Toad and a 200-page volumes, liberally sprinkled with the word "moron" seemed as appropriate for Primo as True Blood or Merchant of Venice. What a difference a year makes. A few months ago, Primo unearthed the Wimpy Kid books and devoured them, spending hours on end at bedtime reading them. So passionate was he for the fine literature that we were getting into arguments at 10pm when I realized he was still awake and tried to wrest the books from his anxious fingers.

"I just want to finish the book!" he'd protest, "I only have sixty more pages!"

In this way, he finished all six books in about two months.

It was sad to see it end because the Wimpy Kid books were the first that really hooked Primo on reading, and I got a little nervous that without anything comparable to dig into, he'd lose interest in the act of reading. So I posted on my handy, local list serve, Park Slope Parents, for recommendations of books like the Wimpy Kid series, which would galvanize the hearts and minds of seven year-old boys -- just in time for Christmas. Here's the list I culled:

Geronimo Stilton

Ellie McDoodle

Dork Diaries

Secrets of Droon

The Zack Diaries

My Weird School

Magic Tree House

Boxcar Children

We checked out a bunch of these last week and Primo was vaguely interested in them all but nothing life-changing. Then we happened upon Dear Dumb Diary, by Jim Benton, who Primo has been smitten with after devouring all the Franny K. Stein books he penned. A perfect choice! Acerbic, edgy, gross, with lots of drawings to make the pages fly. I guess for some parents the protagonist might come across little mean-spirited, and I might not let very impressionable Seconda read it but for Primo, who wouldn't use the word "idiot" without flagellating himself about it, I'm not too concerned. It got him hooked all right. And there's a bunch of installations too - enough to bring us to the next craze.

Happy reading!

Go the F$%@k to Sleep

This new bedtime story for parents has pretty much gone viral so I'm betting you've encountered it in your travels in cyber space. If you haven't, allow me to introduce you to the alternative to Goodnight Moon with lyrical passages like this:

“The cats nestle close to their kittens.
The lambs have laid down with the sheep.
You're cozy and warm in your bed, my dear
Please go the f@#k to sleep.”

Go the F@%$k to Sleep, a book after my own heart.

The Marzipan Pig

Want to read a flat-out freaky kids' book? I highly recommend The Marzipan Pig by Russell Hoban. We inherited this book from my cousin's collection and one day were curious enough to open it. What awaited us was nothing short of children's literature of the absurd. It is such strange shit, so creepy and unsettling yet delightfully funny and lyrical - a total gem, and adding to its gem-ness are the illustrations by Quentin Blake, whose name and whose effortless-looking line drawings you'll recognize if you're a Roald Dahl fan.

Here's the storyline:

A sentient marzipan pig falls behind a couch and is left there to rot, bemoaning the loss of his potential to bring sweet happiness to someone. Then a mouse stumbles upon the pig, gobbles it down and becomes stricken with a kind of love sickness. Instantly, the mouse falls in love with a grandfather clock, but sadly this love is unrequited, and though the clock does give the mouse the time of day, that's about the extent of it, so the mouse gives up on love, goes for a walk outside and promptly gets devoured by an owl, who instantly falls head over heels for a taxi meter.

Yeah, a taxi meter.

The owl thinks the fare is a measurement of the taxi's love and urges it on, "Love me more! More!" with which the taxi seems to comply, by raising the fare as it continues to drive.

And that's only about 10 pages in.

"Tis the season to give absurd kiddie lit. . .

Thank God we're not pioneer people

I am obsessed with Little House on the Prairie -- not the TV show (though, hey, if it’s on, I’m not going to say no) but the book by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Before we left for Italy, I bought Primo the book so we’d have plenty of bedtime reading on the trip, and now I am so deeply invested in the fate of Laura and Mary and Pa and Ma that I am reading ahead after he goes to sleep. Sometimes I’ll get so over-enthused that I’ll read ahead to the next paragraph WHILE I am reading to Primo, which will cause me to fall silent for a minute, then go “Oooooh!” which my son, understandably, finds annoying.

Primo is lukewarm about the book; he listens and all, but I know that if I read anything – cereal box, instructions for the DVD player – for more than two minutes, he will be totally engrossed, so I basically just start reading until the good, wholesome beauty of Wilder’s language hypnotizes him. It took a full 50 pages to push beyond Flat-Out Dull, then we moved into Potentially Appealing To People With Very Low Expectations but after the pack of wolves rolled into the prairie, at the book’s mid-way point, its been an Old School Page Turner.

What I find continually fascinating about it is how freaking hard it was to be a pioneer person. I’d never do it. I mean, I know they didn’t have a ton of choices back then but still, there were those who went bravely into terra nova to start a new life and those who were just like, “Screw it. This shitty hovel we’ve got in the woods is good enough,” and I am sure that I would fall into the latter category, especially now that I see what kind of work is entailed in starting a homestead.

You’ve got to build your “snug, tight” log cabin, including roof, hardwood floor and fireplace, frequently without nails.

You’ve got to fend off wolf packs, PANTHERS!!! (did you know they were indigenous to the US? WTF?) and then there’s all this beef with the Native Americans/ Pa is a cool., progressive pater familias and he understands that everyone can get along, but Ma is always hating on the Native Americans, (In front of the kids? Come on, Ma). Sometimes the Native Americans go to war with each other and then you’re up all night not knowing what the hell is going on.

You have to make your own bullets and all you eat all day is cornbread and bean soup and venison. There is however, tobacco and coffee. Now I see why they didn’t off themselves immediately.

You’ve got to build a well. This didn’t seem like a big deal to me until I read in painstaking detail for 20 pages just what one must do to build a well. I mean, think about it for a second – once you dig deep enough that the hole is taller than you, how do you get the dirt back up to the surface? You’ve got to build a damn pulley and get a helper. PLUS – and I had no idea about this – apparently there are all sorts of toxic fatal gases deep in the earth which can suddenly emerge with no warning and kill you stone-cold dead.

There is no freaking way I’d ever build a well. If we had the terrible misfortune of being pioneers, we’d just have to do it the hard way by walking two miles to the creek every time. We’d just drink less water. We’d be stinky and foul from lack of baths. I wouldn’t care. I’d never have the stamina to build a well.

But the best part of reading the book to Primo was the Christmas chapter. Mary and Laura were desperately hoping that Santa Claus would come but worried he wouldn’t be able to cross the creek because it was so high (“Don’t they know Santa has flying reindeer?” asked Primo. “I know, right?” I said, thinking privately that these pioneer kids had zero freaking imagination). Anyway, in nothing short of a Christmas miracle -- their neighbor Mr. Edwards hikes like 20 miles in the snow without an overcoat to go to the nearest town to get them their Christmas presents from Santa (who was apparently the only lazy person in settler times, and wasn’t even going to TRY and cross the creek with his fat ass). So the children’s stockings were filled – glory of glories! – with the following treasures:

A new tin cup of their very own

A tiny heart-shaped cake made with white flour

A real, shiny penny

And the children were so overcome with gratitude at these riches, so beside themselves with jubilation, that they could hardly speak. Did they DARE to take a bite into their candy cane or heart-shaped cake? They did not. It was too breathtakingly beautiful.

Primo looked depressed at the whole pathetic situation/ And you can bet that I milked it for all it was worth, reminding him in no uncertain terms how lucky he was.

“Some children are so unfortunate they don’t even have a tin cup of their own,” I said, “they have to share it with their mother. And have you ever even drank out of a tin cup? It makes everything taste TINNY. You’d hate it. So tonight, I think you better count your blessings.”

That is reason enough to read the book.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

My cousin was babysitting the kids recently and when I got back, I asked, “What’d you guys do?”

“We read Gothic novels!” exclaimed Primo/

“Reeeeeally?” I asked my cousin.

“Yeah, we were talking about where the Frankenstein story came from –“

“Mary SHELLEY’S Frankenstein,” Primo interjected.

“And I told him about Gothic literature and he was interested so we read about it on Wikipedia,” she said.

Give the internet credit where credit is due.

"What did you learn about it?”

“Well,” said Primo. “Gothic novels are very tragic and usually someone kills someone else and there is a lot of revenge.”

Pretty spectacular babysitter I’ve got, huh?

So, a few days later, we were plodding through an Easy Reader – not Mittens, thank you very much, I think it was from the Dancing Dinos series, in any case not the most enthralling material – and I pointed out to Primo that the more he practiced, the more choices he’d have about what he could read.

“Before you know it, you’ll be reading Frog and Toad, and Magic Tree House, and stuff like that,” I said, “And by the end of first grade, I bet you can read Ramona Quimby.”

“And Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein?”

"What?”

“Will I be able to read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by the end of first grade?”

“Oh,” I demurred, “I doubt it. I mean, that’s really hard. A lot of adults have a hard time reading it.”

He looked crestfallen. I reconsidered.

“Well, who knows?” I said, “You’re a smart little boy and I bet if you really put your mind to it, and practice super super hard, you might just be able to read some of it.”

“You mean I can read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by the end of first grade?” he cried jubilantly.

I love how he specifies that its Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein he’s referring to, not a knock-off or lesser iteration but the real deal.

“Um, I bet you could. If you try really hard. Some of it. Why not?”

That night, where it is usually a striggle for him to read three pages in his Easy Reades, he read five entire books. He brought the books to bed with him. He was a man with a mission. Its waned a bit since, but his goal – however lofty—is pretty great incentive.

I, do though, really hope it’s the sort of thing he forgets about, by June. Or that he makes major strides with the reading. Because from What’s That Mittens? to Frankenstein, well, its quite a leap. But, as the song says, don’t stop dreaming about tomorrow.

Sir Gawain

Primo’s obsession du jour is King Arthur tales. Unlike Greek myths, I don’t know anything about the Round Table stories. I am finding, though, that they are pretty freaking awesome. Racy stuff, these Arthur tales. Lots of extra-marital affairs. Honestly, it smacks of a romance novel, the Lancelot and Guinevere stuff. I love it.

Right now, we’re reading a book about the trials and tribulations of one of King Arthur’s nephew, a worthy and virtuous knight by the name of Sir Gawain.

I’d like you to take a stab at pronouncing that. Go ahead.

My guess, and I’ll stand behind it, since it’s as good as any, was ‘GAY-wan.” Say it fast and, yes, it basically sounds like GAY-one. Sir Gay One

I read this book Sir Gay One and The Green Knight to Primo for an hour or so, probably 20 pages worth, repeating Sir Gay One no less than 45 times.

Then David gets home, hears me reading, and says, “Its Ga-WAYNE. Ga-WAYNE.”

“Are you sure?” I replied, “Because I thought it was GAY-one.”

“No, it most definitely is not. So stop saying that.”

I believed him. And I did try to stop saying it. But you know how once you get a pronunciation stuck in your head, you can’t possibly replace it with the right pronunciation? The spot in your brain that decides how that word will be uttered is already taken and the incorrect pronunciation can not be deposed – it is too powerful. So every night now, I settle down and read some more of the book and every single time I’ll read, “The monster approached Sir Gay One –“ and David’ll yell from the other room: “Its Ga-WAYNE.”

A damn comedy routine.

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?

My kid can read

This won’t seem so exciting to you. I am aware of that.

But for me, this milestone is momentous.

Colossal.

Witnessing him learning to read is exactly like witnessing him learning to speak. I talked a blue streak to him for months and months and it was clear that he understood, sure, but still the day that he uttered “boo” when he wanted me to read him his bedtime story, well that changed everything.

Yes, “book” was his first word.

David and I are book people. It is the one passion we have deeply, truly in common. Reading stories are a kind of religion to us, and if you think I’m overstating the case, let me share with you the fact that I often worry what would happen if one of my kids turns out not to love books. It is an INANE thing to worry about. Of all the things to waste your concern over, it is surely one of the most idiotic, I know. But if it turns out they won’t crack a book for pleasure, it would be like them refusing to come to church with us on Sundays. It’d be their prerogative but it'd be a blow.

So, to see Primo crack the code of words – breaking down the strings of letters to produce meaning – makes me wildly happy.

I’m not saying he’s very keen on it, though. I sort of figured that he would be the kind of kid that taught himself to read at the age of 3 and would keep himself awake til the wee hours reading the dictionary by Kindergarten, and that is definitely not the case. I don’t blame him really. It’s a pain to learn to read. Its hard to sound shit out. It takes patience and there’s precious little pay-off at first. When you’re used to hearing Roald Dahl and Lewis Carroll read aloud every night, its kind of anti-climactic to read “The cat sat on the mat.”


I’ve had to remind myself to back the hell off of the kid and let him take his time with this. I figure the most important thing is to keep him loving literature, to keep him hooked on stories, so that he has ample incentive to trudge through the perplexing phonetics system to learn to do it himself.

The kid is reading. So it won’t be long before we get to discuss the finer points of The Sound and the Fury. Just a matter of time.

Little Literati

Let me first say that this is not a picture of my son. I would never let my child read in a window, especially one without bars on it. It is a hazardous location for a reading nook and I neither condone nor recommend it. Now that we’ve established that, please enjoy the feeling of tranquility this picture inspires. Children. Books. Cooooooozy.

One of the great perks of your child growing older is that he and you, too, graduate to more sophisticated children’s literature. This is a huge deal for me because -- I’ll admit it -- since having my son, I have pretty much stopped reading adult books. Please don’t judge. Don’t act like the cashier at City Lights Bookstore in San Fran, when I was purchasing the three novels my husband had picked out for himself, along with the three children’s books I had picked out, who said: “Oh, I’m so glad to see you buying books for yourself. So many parents come in and just buy books for the kids and it’s so . . . sad.”

That’s the worst. The pity from non-parents (I can only assume this 20-something with a faux hawk was a non-parent). The pity for my brain-dead, no-life-outside-my-kids, last-contemporary-work-of-fiction-I-read-was-the-Corrections, miserable existence. Except I was spared the pity because he thought I was my husband, who does read, voraciously so, both legs of his commute and for a full hour during his lunch break.

I have a statement of defense prepared, if you’re interested.

I was the bookiest, literature-loving-est devotee of the written word you can imagine, the kind of kid who walked down the street with my nose in a book, bumping into things. I used to literally breathe in the scent of old encyclopedias at Sterling Memorial Library in my college years. Even when I was preggo, I read constantly, finishing up my masters in English Lit.

Then the baby touched down and I was obliterated by an exhaustion which frankly, has not let up yet. It sounds like a paltry excuse, I know, but if you are still waking with your kids 3, 4 times a night, and then starting your day of manual labor at 5:30am, I think you’ll buy it. The past few weeks, I’ve been falling asleep while telling the kids their bedtime stories at 7:30pm.

“MOMMY!” Primo yells, “You are saying nonsense! WAKE UP!”

So I may not read books intended for an adult audience but I do read to the kids all the time. We load up on new material at the library at least once a week. Seconda’s only two so her attention span is still limited but Primo’s shaping up to be a bookworm himself which makes his mama proud.

A few months ago, we tentatively made a foray into chapter books and let me tell you, there is no looking back. It is sublime. Don’t get me wrong, I brake for Mo Willems, I swoon for Sendak, I am totally tickled by Kevin Henkes and his deliciously precocious rodent characters. But Primo and I am now entering the hallowed halls of serious literature here. Our starter book was Pippi Longstocking, a hit because of the broad comedy and short chapters. Once he’d been baited with Pippi, I slipped in a little E.B.White. When was the last time you read Charlotte’s Web? That shit is INTENSE. During the last chapter I broke down and cried, though Primo didn’t get what the big deal was. Now we’re onto Stuart Little, a lyrical little gem that’s much funnier than you’d expect.

But the crowd pleaser, no question, is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Witnessing my son get swept away by the irresistible force of Dahl’s fantasy – Primo’s drive to rehash what we’ve just read, to tell the story to his friends, the thrill of speculating what might unfold in the next chapter, and the sweet, sweet sadness of knowing the end is soon to come – it’s kind of breathtaking. And how cool is it that I get to feel this awakening all over again myself, this sweet love affair with other peoples’ imaginations?

Ahhh . . . .motherhood. What bliss! What divinity!

(This message has been brought to you by the League of Little Literati and Foundation for the Furtherance of Dahl Dotage and Devotion.)

OK, your turn. Picks for best first chapter books? Tried and true favorites as well as more recent work, all welcome.