June 29, 2011

Every night before Ariel goes to sleep we read books. That’s usually my job while Belle feeds Jasmine and puts her to sleep. Seems like a sensible allocation of resources since Jasmine has no interest in taking a bottle, and lactating isn’t included in my skill portfolio. When Ariel’s behaving it can be wonderful – we snuggle while I read to her, and being the son of a life-long librarian, reading is in my blood. Some of the books, even for her age group, are really well written, funny at times, even touching. I love some of the classics like “Oh the Places You’ll Go,” and the pigeon books (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive a Bus, The Pigeon Wants a Puppy) are very clever. Of course I expect it will be more fun when she’s a bit older and can appreciate something a little more substantial. For example, a long, long, long time ago my 5th grade teacher introduced our class to the fantastic short stories written by O.Henry (Gift of the Magi is the most famous) and I can’t wait to share those with her in a few years. And then when she gets to High School we can compare thoughts on Hemingway and Faulkner. Ok, that’s like the biggest lie ever, we’re totally not going to do that at all (I’d rather have an enema than read Faulkner again), but it made me sound smart, right? Oh come on, sure it did.

Anyway, of course Ariel doesn’t always behave, and when she’s being difficult the process doesn’t go as smoothly. Oh well, such is life. But another problem is that not all of Ariel’s books are exactly classics. And some aren’t particularly clever, funny or touching. I detest The Grouchy Ladybug (written by the otherwise excellent Eric Carle), an annoying story about a ladybug who keeps wanting to fight everyone, and everyone is happy and willing to fight him, but he’s a big scared-y cat so he moves on to the next animal. What’s nice is that not only is it irritatingly redundant, but it seems to make the case that fighting is a perfectly fine way to settle one’s differences, so that’s just super. Then I just read a story called “I Love You Forever,” about a Mom who rocks her son to sleep every night and sings a song to him about loving him forever, and its all well and good until she’s still sneaking into his room, lifting him up, and rocking him in her arms even once he’s a grown man in his own house across town. Um, really? Nobody finds this a little disturbing? Maybe it’s me. I do enjoy how wildly anachronistic some of the older books seem. My favorite example is Curious George, who is brought out of the jungle and back to civilized society by the Man in the Yellow Hat, and that first night, after a good meal, AND A GOOD PIPE, Curious George is ready for bed. Hooray! The cute little monkey Ariel is supposed to identify with is SMOKING! Outstanding!

Is it too early to start reading her books on baseball statistics and game theory?