When Carlos was 8 I took him and his mother to the Rocky Mountains for the
first time. We camped by a forested lake--aspens and pines--about 7 miles
from the nearest road and took a stroll along the shore. It started to
rain, as it tends to every summer afternoon in the Rockies, and we dashed
back to the tent. What to do with an eight year old, not to speak of his
mother, at such a moment? So I pulled out the one book I'd brought along,
which was Moby Dick, and I read them the first few chapters. A nice place
to read about the magic of water. The rain was plashing off the leaves and
onto the tent, and the gray light was transmuted by the tent's green nylon
into a color very much like being under shallow seas. Carlos was
transfixed. One of my happiest memories of my mostly happy memories of his
childhood.
I don't think he got around to reading the book himself for the first time
until his mid-twenties. I''ve been pushing Tristram Shandy for a couple of
years.
Mark
At 03:22 PM 2/26/2005, Stephen Vincent wrote:
>Not to sound like a hopelessly funky Mandarin American (!), I read my kids
>to sleep (in the last phase in which we - Pearl, Lucas and me - were willing
>to cooperate in this manner) a number of wonderful things including The
>Wizard of Oz (great), Charlotte's Web (great), and then perverse things, or
>things began to feel yucky adult and perversely motivated, "James and The
>Giant Peach," and "Alice In Wonderland," at least the more I got into
>reading them aloud.
>The grand finale was getting 300 pages into Moby Dick with the Rockwell Kent
>drawings. The text, as most know, gets into occasional rhetorical
>discussions of economics, deifics, and what not. But by then Lucas was six
>or seven. And we would stop and have critical discussions about what was
>going on - the details of which I forget. The upside is that he never lost
>his critical sense of evaluating situations. The negative side was that he,
>in middle school, began to tell teachers he did not need to read assigned
>books, that he had read Moby Dick and that was enough. Graffiti Art became
>his great whale in the San Francisco sky, harpooning white and gray walls
>with his crew, so to speak. But that's another story.
>But bottom line I think inheritance of the intimacy and richness and
>implicit trust in hearing voices read stories when you are very young is a
>vital and assuring memory thread that helps one get through the rougher
>spells and challenges of growing up.
>Oh my daughter, four years old and listening to Melville, it was music to go
>to sleep by. I guess that's called "meta-level listening"! She never seemed
>to object.
>
>Stephen V
>
>
>
> > Maurice Sendak writes most of his own books., but not all - Ben
> recently got
> > one out of the library written by Tony Kushner, based on an opera. And he
> > illustrated I Saw Esau, that wonderful collection of children's schoolyard
> > rhymes by the Opies. I'd say that most picture books have different
> > illustrators and writers; the writer/illustrator rolled into one is an
> > exception. Funny how having to read out terrible books scars you.
> >
> > I used to write spells (rhymes) to put under their pillows when my children
> > went through stages of having nightmares. It was effective, but was also
> > the reason why Zoe told everyone at school that I was a witch.
> >
> > My experience of taking my children to poetry readings when young was
> fairly
> > positive, and they like going to readings now. But I do remember, when
> > Josh was around five, walking out of a reading and him telling me: "I
> > clapped everybody except you. I thought your poems were _stupid_." Well,
> > out of the mouths of babes...
> >
> > Best
> >
> > A
> >
> >
> >
> > Alison Croggon
> >
> > Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> > Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> > Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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