A Nod to Bob

A note to googlers: this post isn't about the Bob Dylan tribute album, but if you're wondering whether it's any good: yes, it is.

It may be just about time to break out a poem I have posted before, in honor of some of your kids who've learned to read

"The First Book," by Rita Dove:

Open it.

Go ahead, it won't bite.
Well...maybe a little.

More a nip, like. A tingle.
It's pleasurable, really.

You see, it keeps on opening.
You may fall in.

Sure, it's hard to get started;
remember learing to use

knife and fork? Dig in:
You'll never read the bottom.

It's not like it's the end of the world--
just the world as you think

you know it.

Curious Girl's first book: Mat, in the Bob first level series. I think Moreena got the Bob books just right: they are hardly compelling literature, but the art and the typeface balance beautifully, and the books are easy enough for a kid who is just starting to read to do it on her own. We saw a boxed set at a used bookshop today, and CG said, "Oh, those are baby books." I said no, they were for kids just learning to read, and she asked for them. I said OK (I am a bookstore pushover, after all), and in the car, she started reading the first book on her own. Then the second, and eventually got up to the 6th in the series. Not without some frustration, and not without sometimes forgetting how to sound things out or forgetting what a word means.

But boy was she pleased with herself. Tonight, for the first time, she read me a bedtime story (and read Politica one via Skype, and then I read her one). More fluency will come, and she'll soon be able to read harder words, longer stories. But still, tonight she read a whole little book to me. May it be the first of many, with the literary quality only climbing up.