Ink Smudge Eureka

    "Letters and bridge, or crosswalk?"

    Gabriel chants "Eenie Meenie" to make the decision, repeating "Miney" twice at the end to land "Mo" on the "Letters" route home from daycare.  It is called the Letters route because the "Saint Barnabas Anglican Church" printed into the concrete provides Gabriel with all of the letters in his name except for that "E" which is a few metres away to indicate the corner of Seventh Avenue NW.

(When it rains, it pours?)

    For the longest time we would stop and pick out the letters in his name, make an exaggerated point to the E's on the corner and then spot the "L" before resuming the walk home.  When it was snow-covered, he kicked away the deep, heavy snow to find the writing, but lately he has had less and less interest in identifying the letters in his name.  This afternoon he is more interested in splashing and kicking in the puddles and the writing lay immobile with out notice or significance.

   Nadine and I have been reading to him constantly.  I infamously whispered passages from Haruki Murakami's brick-sized tome 1Q84 during those newborn days and he arrived to a room more than well-stocked with Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak and myriad others that we have read to him ever since.  His visits to the library are constant and I recall him having a massive meltdown one afternoon as he sat naked on his bedroom floor at 4:55 crying that he wanted to go to the library, which was closing at 5.  Books are part of his routine and, even though he can glaze over indefinitely at the sight of an iPad and treats us to a litany of requests for just one more episode of a TV program before supper, bedtime or getting in the car to go somewhere, he does from time to time plunk down quietly with a book and immerse himself in the images, the turn of the pages and the cadences recalled from countless readings.

   He has regularly finished sentences for us as we read and recently, I have made a point of pushing him a little, framing a word with my fingers and telling him what it is or asking if he can recognize it. He has put up a bit of resistance to that and tells me to read it or that he does not want to.  Perhaps it is simply a matter of it all feeling too much like work for him, but I push a little bit.

    Parallel to the reading has been the occasional nudge to see if he will write anything and start working on his letters.  Whenever there are birthday cards to send we get him a card too and he will pick up the pen in his right hand, gripping it between his index and middle fingers and his thumb and giving it a go.  The results have been consistently original and doctorish.  Think abstract rather than representational.

   For some time now I have pondered modelling writing as a habit for him, but have not gotten around to it yet.  For the most part I write at the keyboard and when I do pick up pen and paper it is usually when I am on my own, rather than for the sake of making a witnessed performance of it.  As the adult colouring craze has emerged, I recall the meditative component of practicing kanji when I lived in Japan and thought that it would be a good two-birds with one stone move and make it rather authentic for Gabriel at the same time.  I have the paper and the notebooks that I used to practice in and it would make my effort at penmanship a bit more authentic.  If I start practicing my Roman characters it could cause a bit of concern about the integrity of my faculties.

   Before I have actually had the chance to sit down and work on my kanji and see if Gabriel asks, "What are you doing?", instead of, for example, "Know what?", the time comes for us to get cards in the mail for my father's birthday.

   I head into Gabriel's room with his card for his grandpa and ask his to write something in the card. On this occasion, for the first time, he makes a deliberate effort at copying each letter from the text of the card.  He got his "G" backwards, but that may have been a consequence of me telling him, "It is sort of a circle with a line..."

(Yes, he has had alphabet books.)

After getting past the "G," he fared better and provided not only a reasonable estimation of his name but a sign that the little guy who has been putting up concerning resistance to reading and writing might let Nadine and I sort him out on his printing before he can conclude that he can entirely forego it because of keyboards and touchscreens.

Nick Bland: Savior of the Modern Reading Parent

As a voracious reader and aspiring writer, the books that inhabit Gabriel's life have been a preoccupation from before he was born. I bought a Dr. Seuss compilation a week before he was born, read to him while he was in the womb and proceeded through the pages of a thick tome during the quieter moments in the delivery room and read to Gabriel from that same 900-pager in the days that followed.  Since that time, books have been a part of his routine and I can recall a meltdown two weeks ago where a very weary dude wailed his desire to go to the library that very moment despite being in his birthday suit and the library certain to close before we would arrive there dressed.

Almost everyday there have been a few books to round out the day and there are have been a few occasions where my little extrovert disappears on his own to a quiet space with a book.  I think the habit has been formed, though there enough bleary-eyed, first thought of the day requests to watch TV or something on the iPad to keep me vigilant about ensuring the habit keeps rooted.

The evening bedtime routine with books, invariably involves him promising that he'll turn in after one more book and then one more and so on.  Whether we are reading his books or those we hoard each week from the library, I am left to wonder at times what it really takes to publish a children's book.  There are so many books about fire trucks, fire stations or firemen, that have the exact same plot that I really wonder what sets a prospective kid lit author apart from the others.  After pouring through a book of truck photos or a story lionizing the limited things that trucks or construction equipment actually do, I shrug at the kid lit industry and wonder if it is all an inside game.  When bored with those books and their premature product placement by Tonka, I drifted into the tones and pomposity of a radio ad pitchman.  Gabriel responded with the first furrowing of his young brow. I've let up, unwillingly.

Apart from those books, there are my wife's well-worn and loved collection of Dr. Seuss books which we have complemented with the brilliant posthumous works that have come out in recent years. There has been great relief and pleasure in the discovery of current writers.

I've been lucky enough to have friends recommend the likes of Canadians Melanie Watt and Jon Klassen, but the great discovery in the kid lit section of the store has been the work of Nick Bland, who has in about 10 years assembled a body of work that I have quickly come to trust and adore.  My wife and I can recite the entirety of Bland's The Very Cranky Bear from heart in the dark as the concluding tale for the night before putting Gabriel down.  Cranky Bear has the depth of theme that is missing from so much of the other kid lit that is aimed at the appetite boys or girls have for the items that fill their respective toy boxes.  I know that there is a lot of Young Adult lit that will not match the depth that Nick Bland has etched into the few hundred words he carefully penned for this story and the subsequent ones with the Cranky Bear.

Beyond that brilliant series of five "bear" books are other paths that Nick Bland has followed about incompetent monsters, fathers, pigs and hugs (my non-Bear favorite) that have further confirmed his talent as a big-hearted, wise and ambitious author willing to give kids a little more or require it of them.

With that, I say a resounding, "Thank you," to Nick Bland and look to compile more of his brilliant work.  He will emerge as an author to join Seuss and Sendak in the masterful blending of poetry, humour and simple wisdom.

And if you want the kid's point of view, Gabriel's one word review is, "Again."