A Book’s Cover Can Say a Whole Lot
“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” or so the saying goes, but I have to make an exception in the case of my son Charlie. Ours is a household of many books—-on American history and culture and religion (these are the subjects my husband Jim teaches); on the ancient Greeks and Romans, literature, poetry (these are mine); on autism (well of course); random novels, biographies, oral histories—-and Charlie is not a reader. He has been making steady, slow progress in Edmark (up to Lesson 19) and has about 45 sight words (all nouns; we had to put “the” and “a” and “is” on hold). Charlie’s attention span for reading a book (a picture book, with one line of text per page) seems to be about two pages (he is often up and running as I finish reading the sentence).
I’m very pleased with his patient progress: I love to read, but that’s me, and Charlie is Charlie.For the past several days, Charlie has been very particular about making sure that three books are either beside his bed or on it. These are: a Golden Book pop-up book, My First Day at School; Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel; The Three Bears. Charlie has been setting the three books in a neat row and looking long at the covers.
If I may interpret his choices:
School is very important for Charlie. After two extra days off for Thanksgiving, Charlie has been saying the name of a favorite instructor since Saturday night; after Sunday dinner, he overturned a bowl of rice, looked distressed, and said the instructor’s name—-and smiled and went peacefully to bed after I put (as he requested) “carrots!” into his lunch box, and then put the lunch box into its place on the middle shelf of the refrigerator.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, or a few pages of it, to Charlie.There’s a smiling threesome on the cover of The Three Bears—Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear; in my past fast and quick efforts to read this book to Charlie, I have commented that the three bears are like “Dad, Mom, and Charlie!”.
Charlie went to sleep with the three books beside his bed, and guess which one was on top?
Photo courtesy of Xylographile via Flickr.
6 opinions for A Book’s Cover Can Say a Whole Lot
athina
Nov 26, 2007 at 4:04 am
Our recent achievement is to be able to sit still (and actually pay attention) when we read a book! I know he pays attention because he repeats parts of the story afterwards. And the funny thing is what initiated this. There was this magazine about the Chamber of Economics and an article about a conference in it. My son gave me the magazine and asked me to “read the newspaper”. I don’t know what he found appealing in this particular magazine which is normally of no interest to a four year old, but he sat on my lap and listened to me read the whole article about the conference of the Chamber of Economics (it was two full pages!). After that he insisted on keeping the magazine by his bed, when we put him to sleep. So, when I opened the door to his room to check on him, I found him asleep and the magazine was lying open next to him, in the page where this specific article was printed! This was the start and now we are able to read more age-appropriate books.
Marla
Nov 26, 2007 at 11:37 am
That is so sweet. Maizie often falls asleep with books too. I am so thankful she appreciates books.
ange
Nov 26, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Very sweet! Bubba LOVES “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel” though sometimes I skip lines because *I* get bored. Bubba can’t do books without pictures and if there is more than a few lines of text on a page he gets frustrated immediately. I’m thinking about making some social story books and other books based on his interests (with him in some of the pictures) on Snapfish for Christmas. Believe it or not, we are running out of his kind of books (on his level, with the right text and pictures, right topics) at the library.
Linda
Nov 26, 2007 at 4:07 pm
“I love to read but that’s me, and Charlie is Charlie”.
So sweet, sums up why we love AutismVox.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Nov 26, 2007 at 5:16 pm
*Ahem*, I get a little bored by some pages in Mike Mulligan…….. Linda, thank you…… occasionally Charlie finds a magazine that is lying around and adds it to his bedside collection.
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