Adventures in Reading

     I believe it was Charlie Brown who said, "Reading is an adventure that never ends."  I can vouch for that personally as a reading tutor for kindergartners at a local school.

    The drill is this: there is a two-person desk in the hall outside the classroom. Kindergartners come out one by one with a book drawer from which they can pick out a book to read to me. The teacher also gives me collection of books appropriate for beginning readers. Most kindergartners however like to select a book from their own drawer.

    Sometimes the books they want to read are either long or too difficult for them to read. They may be books their parents read to them, or books that were given as a gift from a relative. One boy pulled out a board book with birds on it.

    I thought, “How hard can a board book about birds be?” I expected words like jay, robin or crow. When he opened it, I saw that each two pages featured birds of a specifict color. But instead of easy birds like robin jay and crow, it was kingfisher, whooping crane and bullock's oriole. I've never even heard of a bullock's oriole.

    Yet, the boy read the birds on the first few pages without a hitch. A gifted reader, I thought. But as he turned more pages, he began to struggle. I realized that he probably had memorized the first few pages. So we began to sound out the more difficult birds. And there were flocks of them. Birds of every color. Birds I'd never heard of. I don't think Audubon knew all these birds, certainly not as a kindergartner. A-v-o-c-e-t. I couldn't even begin to pronounce that one.

    And how many different green and brown birds are there? Enough to fill four pages of this kid's board book.

    So time's up and I ask this kid to send out the next student. The kid told me, “She probably won't come out. But I'll try.” Sounds like I might be in for another reading adventure.

    A girl did come out with her book drawer, sat next to me and pulled out a big book. Oh, oh. “Can I see that?” I asked reaching for the book to see if it was more age appropriate than that bird book. But the girl pulled the book away, turned her back to me and opened the book, starting to say something but just then the hallways became very busy and noisy.

    That went on for a while but I could see the girl turn the pages and she seemed to be reading though I couldn't hear her. Then the hall traffic died down and I peeked over her shoulder. Turns out she wasn't reading at all. She was making up conversations between the illustrated characters in the book.

    I pointed out a word and asked her what it said. “I don't know,” she replied. So I sounded it out for her very slowly. “I know what your mouth is saying,” she rebuked me in a huff. But I eventually got her to read some on her own. Then I asked her to send out Davy D, the next kid on the list. “I don't know who that is?” she said. So we both went back to the classroom and I told the teacher she did not know who Davy D was. “It's Daveed,” the teacher responded (Davyd was on my class list but I had misinterpreted it).

    As Charlie Brown says, the adventure never ends.