Read To Me

      My volunteer work through the senior center here has gone beyond reading stories occasionally to young kindergartners. Now they’re reading to me. One or two times a month I’m assigned a kindergarten class to visit where teachers send students one-by-one out into a desk in the hall with a plastic bin of the books they’re reading currently. They read, I listen.

     

     Well, sometimes I help too, sounding out a word, perhaps asking a question or making a comment. One gifted young reader didn’t just read his story, he performed it with grand gestures and vocal expression. But there was something strange about the book he was reading.

    

      Rather than just being a book about colors or animals or snowmen, like the other books read to me, his book involved a TV set with dials. A TV set that the dad takes to the shop after it breaks down at home. Obviously not a contemporary tale. I took the book from him and checked the copyright date. It was over 20 years old.

     I had a hunch about this book and the way he read it with such gusto. “I’ll bet your mother read  you this book”, I said, figuring it probably was a book she read herself as a kid.

     The boy whose mood had been so light-hearted when he was reading, at once turned serious. “My mother doesn’t even have this book,” he responded coolly. I let it go.

     Another girl not only read her book about baby animals but after each page included a bit of a science lesson. After reading about a fuzzy caterpillar, she turned the book to me and pointed out the various body parts. “Here is its head, here is its spikes, and here is its bottom,” she explained.

     But then after she read the next page on snakes, she added, “I once saw a snake eat a baby dinosaur.” Just as I was about to call B.S., she went on, “It was at a dinosaur museum.” Ohhhh. Probably a model or a diorama or something.

     A separate kindergartner read this same page about snakes, then volunteered that he had a pet snake at home. I don’t like snakes and told him so. I asked what kind of snake he had. A python. So how big was his python? He stretched out his arms as far as they would go and strained to go even further. This was a big snake then.

     He also added that he had a pet penguin. A small one, he said, gesturing to make it look the size of a small dove. So I asked him how a python gets along with this small bird, thinking to myself that the python obviously has to regard this other pet as lunch or rather a light snack given the size implied of the reptile.

     “They’re friends!” the kindergartner assured me excitedly. Again, I didn’t want to argue. I let it go.

     A primer on colors generated a bit of controversy with this one girl. After reading about flowers of various colors, I asked her what color shirt she was wearing. “It’s light pink,” she said.

     “Light pink?” I asked, a little surprised that she picked a shade to go with her color.

     “Yes, light pink versus dark pink,” she explained, as if she were giving me a lesson on colors. What’s wrong with just plain old PINK. But I let it go. I asked her what color sweatshirt I was wearing. She wasn’t sure but then she ventured, “Grey.”

     Grey?? No way could I let it go this time. I told her it was brown. She didn’t believe me so I dug through a nearby box of crayons and colored pencils to find a brown one. Then I held it next to my sweatshirt. She still didn’t think it was brown. “Maybe a dark brown,” she suggested. What’s with the light and dark? Just pick a color and go with it.

     When I got home I wanted some re-assurance I was right on this. I asked my wife what color my sweatshirt was. She said it was ‘charcoal.’ I said ‘no’, it was brown. I told her the little girl said it was grey and my wife agreed that it was more grey than brown. “I don’t know why you say it’s brown,” my wife told me.

     So maybe the kindergartner was right and I was wrong. Change of plan. Next time I go to listen to these readers, I’ll just listen and keep my comments to myself.