The Pleasures of Reading, Rediscovered
Your comments about my reading Charlie a few pages from the ancient Greek historian Herodotus got me to thinking about reading and specifically, about the pleasures of reading. I realized that, while so many of the many children’s books that we have are full of lovely stories charmingly told, with colorful drawings to match, my reading them to Charlie has become a bit of a chore and a bore, on both sides. Even though I pick up each book and read the words as engagingly as I might—I love books, and love to read out loud and hear the words on the page—I always feel I ought to make the activity contribute in some practical way to fostering Charlie’s reading skills.
Reading, as I’ve written often here, has been a very big challenge for Charlie, as have learning the letters of the alphabet and being able to say them to me at any given moment. So whenever I have read a book with Charlie, I have often stopped and pointed to the letters in a word of larger type and asked “what letter?”, and also pointed to the accompanying picture and asked “what is it?” of a car, a dog, etc., and “what color?”. Reading a book had come to be tantamount to a pedagogical assignment with me as teacher and Charlie as student. Charlie has always responded to the questions dutifully, pulling his eyes over to wherever I was pointing, saying what he might, saying something again if he did not get the answer correctly, sighing and looking away.
Reading had become Not Fun for both of us.
And why as a child else did I read so much because reading was not simply fun, it was so good that I decided I must learn other foreign languages so that I could expand my reading experience and not only understand the occasionally italicized words in my books (qu’est-ce que c’est que ça, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, gnothi sauton), but have so much more to read, from times before me and about people and places so far away from northern California suburbia. Reading was nothing but fun.
But my reading of Curious George and Where the Wild Things Are to Charlie has all too often been for teaching and learning, and not so much for pleasure and honest delight. Reading Charlie Herodotus’ account of the rise of the Persians and, tonight after a full Sunday of piano lessons and ocean swimming and the long ride home, the birth of Cyrus the Great, was a way to share something that means a lot to me with my boy. (Herodotus’ Histories was one of the first ancient Greek texts that I read.)
Herodotus recounts how Cyrus’ grandfather, Astyages, the King of the Persians, fears that the child born to his daughter Mandane will supplant him. Astyages therefore has the infant Cyrus sent away to be exposed on a mountain, but the herdsman entrusted with this task keeps Cyrus to raise as his own: The herdsman’s wife has just delivered a stillborn son and this child is placed in Cyrus’ basket and dressed in his royal finery, and Cyrus lives. Herodotus’ story struck a deep chord in me as the philosopher Aristotle elsewhere notes that it was a practice (we do not know how widespread) to expose deformed and disabled babies by leaving them in the wilderness and I wonder, what might have been Charlie’s fate had he been born in previous generations?
I wonder, but fortunately I did not have to wonder tonight. Charlie had been saying “no, no” when I mentioned school and his teachers, but he was quick to note that the bus would come when we looked over his schedule. “Well, I understand you don’t feel like school now but just do your best tomorrow, you will!” I said: Much at school is the same, but with so many changes and transitions and moves happening around Charlie, we have been anticipating confusion in him and, accordingly, anxiety. Charlie was lying on his bed and pulled his blanket tight around himself, and, after I paused from reading about Cyrus, smiled and screwed up his eyes. I sat on his bed and rubbed his back and said that it would be okay, school and everything.
“School,” said Charlie. “Socks.”
“You can put them on tomorrow morning for the bus!” I said. Charlie wrapped his right hand in the blanket: “G’night.”
Cyrus’ royal lineage is discovered when he is about ten years old and he is summoned before Astyages. Who knows but maybe there is something about being ten (as Charlie is) that makes it a time for rediscovery and, too, renewal. And, at the very least, some really good reading.
Photo courtesy of Xylographile via Flickr.
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POSTED IN: Charlisms, Classics, Education, History, Language, Schoolbus
13 opinions for The Pleasures of Reading, Rediscovered
Linda Sullivan
Sep 17, 2007 at 9:29 am
Having raised two NT boys I have to tell you that age 10 is a pivotal one, adolescent-like behaviors begin to emerge. At this age, your son may be “playing” you with regard to wanting to/not wanting to attend school, etc.
gettingthere
Sep 17, 2007 at 9:52 am
Glad you’ve rediscovered the joy of reading for its own sake. I’ll wager that Charlie will sigh a lot less now that you’re simply enjoying a good read with him. In the early days, I too felt that story time had to be turned into a “learning opportunity”. Not much fun for either party. My son soon taught himself to read so that he could read what he wanted and how he wanted, just for pleasure.
KimJ
Sep 17, 2007 at 10:42 am
My son no longer takes the initiative to read “stories” (he prefers game instruction booklets), so I read to him. I only ask him to “sit if you want to see the pictures”, or else he’ll hide under the sheets then complain later than he missed the pictures. One nightly reading is a 365-day (poems or short stories) that is seriously outdated and maybe English. Sometimes I pick a chapter out of his books.
BAck when I was worried about his reading skills plateauing (?), I would simply read the wrong words and Pop would laugh and correct me.
I would think that it’s okay to leave the “unfun” learning to read skills for the teachers and you can keep it fun at home.
mcewen
Sep 17, 2007 at 10:48 am
Eek! Kim J and I have had to take the same road - for me it’s like reading a telephone directory but he hangs on every word in the instruction leaflet!
Cheers
KimJ
Sep 17, 2007 at 11:39 am
oh no, I don’t read the instructions, he does! There is no way I’d read video game instructions. I’d never recover. I require pictures and dialogue in my read-alouds.
I grew out of telephone books in college, though I still love a juicy encyclopedia or dictionary. (with pictures)
C
Sep 17, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Hi Kristina,
Perhaps Charlie and you would enjoy acting out the stories - OK maybe not Herodotus, but maybe Little Miss Muffet (Charlie could be the spider) or a section of Peter Pan. My husband is always the villain…
Kristina Chew, PhD
Sep 17, 2007 at 12:34 pm
If you read the next part about Cyrus the Great it wouldn’t be the best to act out! Yes, I do think there’s something different about Charlie having turned 10. I hope I can keep up with him!
bullet
Sep 17, 2007 at 2:54 pm
I love reading and have been reading to my children since they were born.
Club 166
Sep 17, 2007 at 5:54 pm
…“School,” said Charlie. “Socks.” …
Are you sure he wasn’t saying “School sucks!” ? :)
Joe
Patrick
Sep 17, 2007 at 6:02 pm
I enjoyed the teacher reading to us the Chronicles of Narnia, and the JRR Tolkien Trilogy, at that age. Supertoys last all summer Long was in there somewhere too!
Earlier teachers had read us Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey.
Sooo if he hasn’t been spoiled by the hollywood/dvd versions, those are some things a young boy might really get into hearing!
Later when I felt like reading myself was another story… Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage, the Westworld shooting script, the Black Hole, etc.
Shhhhhh…… we’re in the library
Oct 5, 2007 at 2:00 pm
[…] Books are not my son Charlie’s favorite things but he does like to go for a (fast) visit to the library. One reason we often have to keep visits short is that Charlie has a hard time not talking when we are there and I have to say “gotta be quiet” a few too many times. People look up at his too-loud “choose a book!” and, while they go back to whatever they are doing, I feel the need to rush us down to the children’s section. I was pleased to receive a message from a friend who is a librarian regarding INFOLINK, the Eastern New Jersey Regional Library Cooperative, which is seeking information about libraries that successfully created programs for children and adults with autism: There is a strategic need for libraries to provide services in proactive and creative ways to children and adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their families. Successful, documented library models can serve as replicable programs across the New Jersey Library network. In response to this need, the INFOLINK Executive Board approved a Request for Proposal (RFP) at their meeting on September 19, 2007. […]
Jenny McCarthy, Autism Mother
Oct 27, 2007 at 11:57 pm
[…] of the Year? No idea. (I had to look those facts up on Wikipedia.) I was in graduate school then reading a lot of books and I didn’t have a TV […]
A Book’s Cover Can Say a Whole Lot
Nov 26, 2007 at 12:55 am
[…] 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 […]
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