The coffee table in our living room is a repository of books.
Down below, you will find handsome and occasionally weighty tomes such as Gardner’s “Art Through the Ages,” Nigel Rodgers’ massive “Ancient Rome,” “The World Atlas of Wine,” and the only Godfather book I’ll ever need, “The Annotated Godfather.” The slimmest volume, curiously, has the most expansive title: “Catalogue of the Universe,” published back in 1979.
On top of the table are the books that matter, the books we actually read. More than half a dozen of Norman Bridwell’s “Clifford” books, for starters. I’m not particularly fond of them, but these are the books my 4-year-old boy Silas currently devours, and so that is what we read. A couple months ago, he went through an intense “Frog and Toad” phase, which was immensely pleasurable for both of us. One, a worn but intact Scholastic paperback “Frog and Toad are Friends” was mine when I was a kid.
We’ve also taken a few runs through Anne Hunter’s “Possum’s Harvest Moon,” which was a pleasant surprise. I grabbed that off the library shelf thinking he wouldn’t go for it, but he did when I casually introduced it, and he’s actually requested additional readings. The last week or so, he’s been obsessed with “Arthur’s Birthday Party,” which he insists be read multiple times per sitting. Marc Brown’s books aren’t among my favorites, but it’s what Silas wants, so it’s what we read.
These single-book obsessions have occurred ever since he showed an interest in books. I am told this is normal, so I’m not worried, even if it becomes tedious. One morning this month, I awoke early, shortly before 6 or so, got up and realized Silas’ bedroom door was open. He knows he is not supposed to be up until the “owl” (a clock) turns green at 7 a.m. He had retreated to the living room, sitting quietly on one end of the couch as dawn’s warm glow began to fill the room. He was lost in a book on his lap, reading in a way that perhaps at some level he understands, but cannot articulate.
I slipped quietly back to bed. Sure, he was breaking a house rule, but a far more egregious violation would have been to interrupt bliss.
That Silas has the ability and will to choose his books hit me during a recent library trip. We were looking for books about airplanes. It was refreshing to get out of the picture book room for a while and browse the non-fiction shelves. So I pulled a few down, and we had our little nest there in the aisle. And then, his eye fell upon the Hindenburg.
He pulled down a copy of Patrick O’Brien’s “The Hindenburg,” a 33-page picture-heavy books suitable for – I have no idea. Kids maybe 10 and up? But definitely not 4-year-olds.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the orange inferno on the cover.
“That’s a fire,” I replied, feeling uncomfortable. I suddenly remembered his favorite tune from the world of Thomas the Tank Engine – “Accidents Happen Now and Again.”
“They had an accident.”
He wanted to take it home. I didn’t exactly say no, but casually directed his attention elsewhere, and he eventually moved on. I put it back.
Last week we were back there again, this time hunting for books about submarines. The cover of a recent issue of National Geographic features James Cameron, having dived to the deepest part of the ocean. (It’s a terrific piece, by the way.) Silas has been inspecting pictures of Cameron’s submersible. So we returned to the library to hunt for submarine books. As it so happens, they reside next to the airplane books, which are next to the books about blimps.
Again, “The Hindenburg” came down, and he began flipping through it. And it hit me: I’m not in charge. Oh, I may be in charge of what I allow him to take home – it’s my library card, after all – but I am not in charge of what appeals to him. Of the thousands of images that fall within his field of vision every day, I have no control over his desire to revisit the ones that, for whatever reason, he finds interesting. So I sat there, watching him inspect images – nothing terribly graphic, really – from that awful day in 1937 at the New Jersey airfield. Someday, not today, but someday, I’ll have to explain what happened. I will have to tell him that people died. Even worse, I will have to explain the swastika.
This Hindenburg thing has had me thinking – thinking about books I encountered in my youth that led to awful places. Sneaking peeks at “The Exorcist” at the local library. Eli Weisel’s “Night.” Robert Cormier’s “After the First Death,” in which a father, for the sake of a greater good, sacrifices his son’s innocence. Of course, I was much older than four at the time. I also vaguely recall a young adult novel about child abuse. The title escapes me, which is just as well. I would not be able to read it today.
It’s had me thinking about the books in our house. Some of the graphic novels parked on a floor-level shelf should gravitate elsewhere – Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” comics, “A History of Violence,” and “I Am Legend,” to name a few obvious candidates. And yet I must reconcile that impulse with my desire to introduce Silas to Shakespeare, whose delightful comedies sit next to plays like “King Lear,” “Macbeth” and the hyper-violent “Titus Andronicus, written by Shakespeare during what I call his Tarantino phase.
It’s all about timing, context and being available for guidance. Censorship is not the goal, and never will be. Art is the cognition of life itself, and exposure to stories is one way children learn about fear. In one of the “Frog and Toad” stories, Frog tells Toad the tale of the “Big Dark Frog.” Not surprisingly, that became one of his favorites. His pre-school teacher explains: Silas is teaching himself about unsettling emotions, to show himself that he can deal with them.
Ultimately, the lesson the Hindenburg drove home for me is that I need to be ready for the inevitable questions, and that I’d better not sound like a jabbering idiot when I provide the answers. Because the questions about the world are starting to come, and the world Silas inhabits is filled with books.
Down below, you will find handsome and occasionally weighty tomes such as Gardner’s “Art Through the Ages,” Nigel Rodgers’ massive “Ancient Rome,” “The World Atlas of Wine,” and the only Godfather book I’ll ever need, “The Annotated Godfather.” The slimmest volume, curiously, has the most expansive title: “Catalogue of the Universe,” published back in 1979.
On top of the table are the books that matter, the books we actually read. More than half a dozen of Norman Bridwell’s “Clifford” books, for starters. I’m not particularly fond of them, but these are the books my 4-year-old boy Silas currently devours, and so that is what we read. A couple months ago, he went through an intense “Frog and Toad” phase, which was immensely pleasurable for both of us. One, a worn but intact Scholastic paperback “Frog and Toad are Friends” was mine when I was a kid.
We’ve also taken a few runs through Anne Hunter’s “Possum’s Harvest Moon,” which was a pleasant surprise. I grabbed that off the library shelf thinking he wouldn’t go for it, but he did when I casually introduced it, and he’s actually requested additional readings. The last week or so, he’s been obsessed with “Arthur’s Birthday Party,” which he insists be read multiple times per sitting. Marc Brown’s books aren’t among my favorites, but it’s what Silas wants, so it’s what we read.
These single-book obsessions have occurred ever since he showed an interest in books. I am told this is normal, so I’m not worried, even if it becomes tedious. One morning this month, I awoke early, shortly before 6 or so, got up and realized Silas’ bedroom door was open. He knows he is not supposed to be up until the “owl” (a clock) turns green at 7 a.m. He had retreated to the living room, sitting quietly on one end of the couch as dawn’s warm glow began to fill the room. He was lost in a book on his lap, reading in a way that perhaps at some level he understands, but cannot articulate.
I slipped quietly back to bed. Sure, he was breaking a house rule, but a far more egregious violation would have been to interrupt bliss.
That Silas has the ability and will to choose his books hit me during a recent library trip. We were looking for books about airplanes. It was refreshing to get out of the picture book room for a while and browse the non-fiction shelves. So I pulled a few down, and we had our little nest there in the aisle. And then, his eye fell upon the Hindenburg.
He pulled down a copy of Patrick O’Brien’s “The Hindenburg,” a 33-page picture-heavy books suitable for – I have no idea. Kids maybe 10 and up? But definitely not 4-year-olds.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the orange inferno on the cover.
“That’s a fire,” I replied, feeling uncomfortable. I suddenly remembered his favorite tune from the world of Thomas the Tank Engine – “Accidents Happen Now and Again.”
“They had an accident.”
He wanted to take it home. I didn’t exactly say no, but casually directed his attention elsewhere, and he eventually moved on. I put it back.
Last week we were back there again, this time hunting for books about submarines. The cover of a recent issue of National Geographic features James Cameron, having dived to the deepest part of the ocean. (It’s a terrific piece, by the way.) Silas has been inspecting pictures of Cameron’s submersible. So we returned to the library to hunt for submarine books. As it so happens, they reside next to the airplane books, which are next to the books about blimps.
Again, “The Hindenburg” came down, and he began flipping through it. And it hit me: I’m not in charge. Oh, I may be in charge of what I allow him to take home – it’s my library card, after all – but I am not in charge of what appeals to him. Of the thousands of images that fall within his field of vision every day, I have no control over his desire to revisit the ones that, for whatever reason, he finds interesting. So I sat there, watching him inspect images – nothing terribly graphic, really – from that awful day in 1937 at the New Jersey airfield. Someday, not today, but someday, I’ll have to explain what happened. I will have to tell him that people died. Even worse, I will have to explain the swastika.
This Hindenburg thing has had me thinking – thinking about books I encountered in my youth that led to awful places. Sneaking peeks at “The Exorcist” at the local library. Eli Weisel’s “Night.” Robert Cormier’s “After the First Death,” in which a father, for the sake of a greater good, sacrifices his son’s innocence. Of course, I was much older than four at the time. I also vaguely recall a young adult novel about child abuse. The title escapes me, which is just as well. I would not be able to read it today.
It’s had me thinking about the books in our house. Some of the graphic novels parked on a floor-level shelf should gravitate elsewhere – Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” comics, “A History of Violence,” and “I Am Legend,” to name a few obvious candidates. And yet I must reconcile that impulse with my desire to introduce Silas to Shakespeare, whose delightful comedies sit next to plays like “King Lear,” “Macbeth” and the hyper-violent “Titus Andronicus, written by Shakespeare during what I call his Tarantino phase.
It’s all about timing, context and being available for guidance. Censorship is not the goal, and never will be. Art is the cognition of life itself, and exposure to stories is one way children learn about fear. In one of the “Frog and Toad” stories, Frog tells Toad the tale of the “Big Dark Frog.” Not surprisingly, that became one of his favorites. His pre-school teacher explains: Silas is teaching himself about unsettling emotions, to show himself that he can deal with them.
Ultimately, the lesson the Hindenburg drove home for me is that I need to be ready for the inevitable questions, and that I’d better not sound like a jabbering idiot when I provide the answers. Because the questions about the world are starting to come, and the world Silas inhabits is filled with books.
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