Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Take a look, it's in a book

If you are of my generation, there's a good chance you may be singing the theme song to "Reading Rainbow".  I hope so.  I am, without a doubt, a product of public television.  Back in the day, before cable, we were a PBS family.  Do any of you remember the "Friends of Sesame Street" program?  It was a fund raiser and when you donated money you received a "Friends of Sesame Street" t-shirt.  We took turns-donating every year, but only enough for one shirt.  When it was my shirt year, well, excited doesn't even cover it.

In addition to public television, I've always been a huge fan of the library (even when they are putting on sub par environmentally themed puppet shows).  I may have mentioned before that when I was in fourth and fifth grade I was a library aide.  And y'all?  I thought I was AWESOME! Nobody really had the heart to tell me that I was just in shy child's paradise.  My elementary librarian was amazing.  And I fell madly in love with books.  Fourth grade was the year I was introduced to Beverly Cleary.  And Ramona.  Oh, how I love Ramona Quimby.  I harbor a secret dream that my kids will love books, too.  I keep it a secret because you know as soon as I say it out loud, they will, on purpose, not like books.  Kids are that way, you know!

Along the way, I have shared some of my favorite story books with Drew.  Suffice it to say, we have slightly different taste.  I'll read him what I think is a FABULOUS book and he will say, "Mom, I liked it, but I didn't love it."  Ok then.

Monday when we were at the library we were having a discussion about fiction vs. nonfiction books.  He was way excited to check out some books about "the old days."  Then he looked at me and said, "Mom, do you think this library has any books about World War I?"  Ummmm....what????  How do you, five year old child of mine, even know there's such thing as World War I much less want to read books about it??  I showed him the "war" section (heaven help me) and he picked out books with "really good pictures".  When pressed a little more, he told me he overheard Big Dan and his boss discussing World War I (because what else do attorneys talk about while they're filing??)  I'm amazed he remembered, and a little impressed he wanted to learn more about it.  I'm also quite chagrined about the whole "war" aspect of it all.

This is not exactly how it played out in my "dreams"...

1 comment:

Heather S. said...

I tell my husband this quite regularly: boys are weird. Even cute little five year old boys.