les mots

I think the real reason we get the Post on Sundays - besides a fading yet persistent attachment to reading the paper on an actual piece of paper - is to see Frances' face light up when she finds the 'Kids Post' section of the paper and watch her scope out a quiet spot to read it in. She still prefers being read to, and so the sight of her with a book or newspaper, all wrapped up in her own universe, evokes the tenderest feelings. Nostalgia for the days of board books mingles with a vicarious excitement for all the books she has yet to meet.

Her increasingly independent reading has developed alongside her brother's growing fascination with language and books. At three, he is in love with rhyming, rhythms, the sound and look of letters. He cracks himself up with nonsense rhymes and silly words and will sit motionless, barely breathing, before a good, musical poem. In the right mood, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats transfixes him, and today I read the witches' scene from Macbeth - at his request - four times in a row.

The same witches that mention tossing the liver of a blaspheming Jew, the nose of a Turk, and a Tartar's lips into their bubbling cauldron full of hell-broth? Yes, those witches! I would not have thought of it, but the scene is included in our latest favorite poetry collection for kids, A Foot in The Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing, and Shout. (The team behind it, Paul B. Janeczko and Chris Rashcka, have collaborated on two other collections worth checking out, A Kick in the Head and A Poke in the I.) As Gabriel explained to me, the illustration of the witches is kind of silly, so when he looks at it the words don't sound too scary.

It's the sound that entrances him, after all. His response to poetry illuminates how words are so much more than their definitions; how the sound and feel and rhythm of language is what first draws us in. I don't think I'm breaking any rules by sharing a poem here from the same collection:

The Pickety Fence

by David McCord

The pickety fence

The pickety fence

Give it a lick it's

The pickety fence

Give it a lick it's

A clickety fence

Give it a lick it's 

A lickety fence

Give it a lick

Give it a lick

Give it a lick

With a rickety stick

Pickety 

Pickety

Pickety

Pick

So I'm reading this one tonight, per Gabriel's request. (Okay, maybe I suggested it. And then asked if we could read it one more time.) Usually after dinner the children either leap onto the couch or circle the coffee table, surveying the haphazard piles of library books like vultures. (Or maybe vulture chicks, which I imagine are way cuter than their parents). They often fight over the reading selections. But this evening was different. Gabriel was holding a dinosaur book in his lap, open to his favorite picture. It was at the ready should his attention wane, or should he feel the need to assert his independence. Frances was on the other side of me, reading her own book, nearly oblivious to us, except when we begged her to listen to a really good poem. But she wasn't interested in our excellent, musical poems. There was nothing to fight over for her - nothing at stake - because she already had it covered. And that's how it is as kids grow up sometimes. They become more independent, and while independence comes with pride and accomplishment, and makes for less conflict and effort in certain ways, it's a loss and a sadness all the same.

Tonight was the first time she has ever indulged me quite like this - turning half of her attention to what we were reading and asking her to share in. Pickety pickety pickety pick! Don't you love it? She'd look sort of vague and say, sure. Yeah, that's good.... and then go right back to her book. It struck me that part of the pleasure Gabriel and I had taken in these poems earlier in the day was anticipating sharing them with Frances. We just knew she'd love them, too. But there we were, each with a book in our own lap, and the only selection that really snagged her attention - the only time I felt that language magic bind us all together - was the poetry of those nasty, scheming witches.

But really, am I complaining? Double, double, toil and trouble? I'll take it.