Two Children Tell: ‘Book, book!’ – Nicholas talks about books

In the latest in her series Two Children Tell, Virginia Lowe describes her son’s special relationship with books.

N: This is a small house. A small house but a good one.

[He was almost four (3y11m) and was bouncing boisterously from room to room on an orange ball with handles.]

V: You like it, do you?

N: Yes, it’s got lots of books and stuff.

One week (and many readings) later he was still thinking about the books which, even forty years ago, covered almost every available wall of the house.

N: How do your own books get into your house?

V: Someone buys them and gives them to you. What did you think?

N: I thought when the builder builded the house he made them too!

This didn’t seem to be a flight of fantasy, because some weeks later he asked again

N: How did books come, which are our own books?

V: We bought them or brought them from the old house.

N [patiently as to an idiot]: No, the ones we had forever. I mean the ones in the house when we came here.

It seemed that nothing could convince this four-year-old that our house was once without books. They seemed as much a part of the house as doors and windows (4y1m).

This is the same child who had the demand ‘Book, book’ among his earliest words at eighteen months, just as his sister had had ‘Wead wead’ among hers – used in the same situation, chasing after an adult with a book held out appealingly.

Why this fascination with books?

Of course there was the fact that the house was full of them, as he had pointed out, and they were very important to the adults, who read to themselves and to the children, every available moment.

Books were the repository of stories, and stories were of vital import to these two children. One can of course tell stories from the pictures, just as one may also use the pictures for vocabulary building (labelling), but we parents chose to read the words, even to babies. This led to an enjoyment of literary language – a different type from everyday conversation – and to extensive quotation in Rebecca’s case – and an early understanding of the story itself, of its structure, its beginning, middle and ending.

When at 1y1m he was playing on the floor, while listening to me read a novel to his sister, he heard the word ‘bird’ and came across to look. There were no pictures! He pointed solemnly to the print and said ‘bir’ – it seemed that he already understood that the printed text carried the words we read, that they didn’t come directly from the reader. When he was four he replied to an author-intrusive question:

Text: Can you see the brown bear?

N (scornful, ever alert to condescension): A-course I can, read-maker!

He had forgotten the word ‘author’ but was clear on the concept.

Stories were also important in the process of working out what is real and what is not. ‘Is the Wiz a Woz alive in the story?’ he asked (4y5m) of the Wizard of Oz (and of course he was quite right to query it, there isn’t really a wizard). Having watched Tarzan on TV over the road: ‘Tarzan is my favourite not-real person.’ And ‘Does Tarzan always win? Why do baddies never win even though they look the most monsterish?’(4y10m). He was unconvinced by his father’s explanation that most people wanted the goodies to win. He and Rebecca had been playing goodies and baddies with the baddies winning, of late. Wondering if the frightening Groke (Jansson) was always awake, he went off chanting ‘We don’t know and we don’t know ‘cause we’ve never seen one and there’s nothing real about them’ at 4y2m.

There were characters of course to empathise with. He often chose a character to be his ‘little friend’, and to ‘save’. To the Little Half Chick, stranded on the weather vane, he declared ‘If I saw that bird up there, I’d get a big enormous ladder and climb up, and get him down.’ and in the Pied Piper he was clearly moved by the plight of the little lame boy left behind. ‘I’d build a little pretty house, and I’d marry him’. He went on to become a paramedic, ‘saving’ people in need.

Nick would also identify with characters. He particularly loved irascible, indomitable Little My, in Jansson’s Moomintroll stories. ‘Little My is always cross. Little people are often cross. I’m quite cross sometimes’ – which was true and showed an unexpected self-awareness at 4y4m.

Dr Virginia Lowe lives in Melbourne, Australia, and is a literature adjunct associate at Monash University. She is the proprietor of Create a Kids’ Book assessment agency. Her book Stories, Pictures and Reality: Two Children Tell (Routledge 2007) is based on the records of reading to her children. Lines Between John and Virginia Lowe a poetry chapbook has just been published.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS MENTIONED

The Wizard of Oz L. F. Baum

Fairy Tale Treasury Virginia Haviland and R.Briggs

The Story of the Pied Piper (retelling Browning’s) Barbara Ireson and G Rose,

Finn Family Moomintroll Tove Jansson