Reading: All the Names

10 December 2002: Reading aloud

Over the years I've tried to correct certain shortcomings in RDC's reading. (He's tried to return the favor, but being read to puts me to sleep. Though I deny this when I'm actually being read to, I don't when I'm awake. When I'm being read to I want to continue to be read to, and since being asked if I'm awake wakes me up, the truthful answer to "Are you asleep?" is in fact no.)

So I started out reading him To Kill a Mockingbird and Watership Down, the lisa-essentials. Then Alice in Wonderland because hello, English major? Then Phantom Tollbooth. So he understands the significance of a hand on the top of the head as a single gesture of affection, and what I mean when I swear in Lapine, and how various mountains look like trolls. I'm not sure if I read him Wrinkle in Time. Also The Shadow Guests, The Bassumtyte Treasure, Swallows and Amazons, and then several this year, The Yearling (which he gave me last Christmas), Holes, The View from Saturday, Walk Two Moons, The Westing Game, and just lately Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

I've been debating what to read him next. My reading slower than usual because aloud, at a remove of some years, and to a critic, meant that when Justin told Mrs. Frisby they would slide down the cage stand like a fireman's pole, RDC heard an addendum about how that simile must have been hugely reassuring to her since she would have known exactly what such a pole is. Also I had never noticed how much the end is set up for a sequel.

Mrs. Frisby won the Newbery in 1971, but O'Brien died before finishing Z for Zachariah, which feels to me to be set at least ten years earlier. It's not, but I guess I place all Armageddon books between 1957 and 1963 unless I know they're early '80s. I remember deciding when I first read it that Wind in the Door had to be set way in the future, because Mrs Murry remembers her mother talking about wondering whether the pussywillows would ever bud again. (I remember that as Wind but it's much more a Swiftly Tilting Planet story, isn't it?)

We seem to be on a Newbery kick, so...Island of the Blue Dolphins? "Is that the one about the Eskimo?" he asked. No, San Nicolas is kinda the opposite climate, but I loved Julie of the Wolves (and My Side of the Mountain) for the same reason--young people living on their own in the wild. Of course, Island and Julie both carry a CM rating. My Side of the Mountain is more Mine than vital to A Survey of Children's Literature.

Maybe Jackaroo; I won't risk finding out for certain that he doesn't like the Tillermans but he should have some Voigt.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry? "You've read me that one." I have? I don't think I have, but I'm sure I've told him the basic story. It's important, thought it would lose a lot of its flavor in my voice.

The Book of Three? Lord no. Gurgi is annoying enough in print. But that reminded me:

Bridge to Terabithia! "Terabithia is a land in the Narnia books that they sail near in the Dawn Treader. Well, Terabinthia. One day when Jesse's milking the cow he meets a new kid, Leslie, whose family moved to this hick town to get out of the city. In contrast Jesse's father has been laid off and on lucky days he gets work in the city moving furniture. Jesse likes to draw, of which his father doesn't approve, especially since he's the only son of five children. Jesse and Leslie have a kingdom in their woods, Terabithia. In their kingdom when she mock-threatens him and he tells her she can't kill the king, she says "regicide" and tells him the story of Hamlet. He imagines how he would draw the ghost, shimmering up out of layers of watercolor paints, which he doesn't have. Another time she tells him about Moby-Dick, and he pictures a stark white whale on a wine-dark sea and how vividly he could draw that if he had oils. It's just a wonderful story about friendship." Now then, OMFB, did I give anything away? But RDC asked, "Did he ever get any paints?"

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I have had a mouse or more in my compost for some time. I don't put cheese or meat or oils or fats in it except whatever bit of flesh might be at the bottom of the occasional shrimp tail. I even rinse egg shells. But why wouldn't a mouse be interested in regular vegetable scraps and stale heels of bread? Of course it's interested. Today when I lifted the lid to add a couple of pounds of vegetable pulp from Wild Oats's juice bar, I noticed a pretty little tunnel through the layer of leaves that covers last week's vegetables. Flaunt it, why don't you?

Screw Mrs. Frisby. If I find a cinderblock I'll dig it into the backyard complete with a pantry lined with pebbles and a hallway connecting the two rooms and a tunnel slightly wider than a mouse but slightly narrower than a cat's forepaw. But a sensible mouse would rather live in the compost, right next to the food, which even ought to put out some heat, than in a cinderblock.

Last May I didn't plant my garden one Saturday because parent starlings wouldn't feed their escaped nestling if I was in the backyard at all. That was fine; I could wait a day for a crow to eat it. But I have to turn the compost. I really don't want to plant my pitchfork through Martin, Teresa, Cynthia, or Timothy though.

Speaking of my compost, RDC's campaign to lower his blood pressure means no coffee grounds for the coffee. The quasiStarbucks in the grocery store near Dot Org was shocked when I asked for grounds.