The Lad Unplugs for Summer

For the second time in the last four days, my little showman and chatter-upper extraordinaire has sought solitude. He has made a clear effort to excuse himself and get some quiet time to decompress or just chill.

On Sunday, he sat by himself in the Star Wars camp chair that he has in his room and tonight he flopped into bed, each time plowing through book after book for a while to find some quiet time. He has done it before and it has always been good to know that he has identified books and time with them as a refuge. It was the end of the day and there was some comfort in what he surveyed in each book, even though he is not up to reading on his won yet.

There is the sense that things are a little off of late.  Apart from being a little hard to induce into listening to dear old mom and dad, he confessed yesterday to feeling tired and angry because he did not have the chance to nap during daycare yesterday. Naps, however, have not been part of his routine since January. He also said he was a little angry a while back because his hair was too long and he wanted to have it shorter - an aggravation that he might regret us accommodating if we give him a cut as aggressive as he wishes.

Tonight as he lay in bed looking through a Dr. Seuss anthology and asking that the music in the living room be turned off, his supper barely touched it was a reminder that summer has thrown him for a loop. In my own instance, recall the discombobulation that comes with the long days that spike one level of energy with the extended daylight and erodes the sleep that is just as important for the regulation that it brings. He struggles with it, but the quiet time with the books is a sign that he has a strategy for dealing with it.

The strategy and his willingness to acknowledge when he is angry are blessings that I cannot cite from my own childhood. Perhaps my parents would be more capable of citing this than I could in retrospection. Still, his willingness to drop out for a while and cut off the stimulation is, for an extrovert, a knack that I am quite happy to see.

As he came out of that quiet time to proceed with the rituals of bed time there was a burst of energy and foolishness, but it faded to calm as he went through the brushing of teeth and tongue, his vitamins and the two bedtime books I read him.  Summer will probably sustain the alternation between suppertime listlessness and childish chaos for a few weeks but I am thrilled to see that he can cope with it from time to time.

Now, if I can just get him to reshelve his books.

Books For the Inner Child

With some kids lit or entertainment there is the unique pleasure of the wry wink to the adults. Something about rabbits being good at multiplication in Zootopia, a sight gag that pays homage to the Godfather trilogy or a wry, sly pun that lets the reader know that the author knows who actually has to read the book. Perhaps one of those elements lies dormant in a child's memory or imagination like a buried treasure awaiting maturity for revelation.

I have, however, come across children's books that leave me wondering if a child needs the message or moral of a story.  Maybe it is a little early for a child to think seriously about the place you will actually go as Dr. Seuss described them and as my Philosophy of Education professor read to the class at the end of our year with him. He was, with Oh, The Places You Will Go, an early adopter, one who had identified adults' needs for that particular message and shared that with my classmates and I in 1990 without any trace of irony or the weariness that might have followed 10 or 15 years later when it was, like many aptly-written stories or lines, unfairly rendered cliche.

With the exception of the countless variations on stories of fire trucks at work and similar tales, there are stories with clear messages in them that are both a pleasure to pass down as they are to share. Whether it is the criticism of tyranny in Seuss' Yertle the Turtle (to name only one of his) to the more recent description of the boundless and growing unconditional love Nick Bland describes in The Runaway Hug or the timelessness of friendship in Marianne Dubuc's buried treasure of The Lion and the Bird, those theme-rich children's stories thrill me when they come down from the shelf.

There are other stories that make me wonder if a child actually needs to hear them. Or, to be more specific, whether my four-year-old needs to hear them yet. The first story that comes to mind is The Little Prince, which -- length aside -- might simply prompt a child to say, "Well, of course" at each of the passages from the book the adults hold onto like talismans or mantras to navigates them through the baffling rationalizations and foibles adults find themselves prone to.

Beyond that classic, there are other stories that I have come across that baldly express to adults something that we need to hear. Koji Yamada's What Do You Do With An Idea is the compact and beautiful complement to the numerous weighty tomes on creativity that have emerged like April dandelions in the last few years. It foregoes the theory, the psychological research, priming exercises and reflective practices that so many adult-oriented creativity books contain in favour of an extended poem about the life span of an idea. Yamada points out all the stages along the way from the nascent discovery of a thought to changing the world in a matter that one can memorize over time. This is not to say that a child would not get it - just that they are more likely to think, "Well, of course."

In his book The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim talks about the distinction between the conscious, subconscious and the preconscious, saying that it is intrusive to make our preconscious thoughts conscious. Stories can help us ensure those preconscious aspects of our character or our interpretation of the world are reinforced and perhaps ensure a child that it is okay to believe certain things that might be drawn into doubt at times that would make even a four-year-old ask, (as he has), "What is this world coming to?!"

For adults, getting lost and reassured in a lesson on creativity, the whimsy of a desert-stranded pilot's reflections or hallucinations on adulthood and mortality or a mantra that assures you of what makes a family a family seem better suited for adults in need of the courage or evidence to believe in certain possibilities at a time where the safest place in the world is in a bedtime fortress of pillows and blankets burrowing into an illustrated truth delivered from a wise, succinct storyteller.

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."