Crappy Unimaginative Book Spark Imagination In Child

A few months ago the art teacher at work came by my office and asked me for some manila folders.  I don't know how life is for teachers in other schools, but we pretty much have to buy all of our own supplies aside from computers and paper for copying and printing.  So it is a bigger favor than you'd expect for me to give her a stack manila folders.  I gave her a stack in the name of a happy workplace and as a thank you, the next day, she gave me a stack of Hello Kitty books for Charlotte.  And by "gave me," I mean unloaded on me yet another stack of random crap she has and is trying to get rid of.  Pretty good trade: I'll give you the trash I was about to take out for those folders you'll eventually need and bought with your own time and money.

So I brought the books home and didn't think much of it until.... Charlotte found them and fell in love with them.... and Emily and I quickly hated them.  I can allow for the text in the book to be horrible because the books are meant for emerging readers.  Like Emily says, a computer probably wrote them.  But a computer also drew them.  It is the crappy artwork that drives me batty.  And the art teacher gave me the bleeping books.  Irony.













Alas, the books remain.  And Charlotte continues to loop back to them and want to look at them nonstop for two or three days straight before moving on to the next step in her book cycle.  This morning, Emily and Charlotte read the timeless classic Hide-and-Seek six times while I was out running.  It is probably no coincidence she has insisted on wearing her Hello Kitty boots for the rest of the day.

Later Charlotte and I went to Seward Co-op which is still her favorite place on earth.  When we got home, Pancho wanted to go outside and Charlotte did not want to come inside.  So I left the two of them out there while I put the groceries away.  Five minutes later, Pancho and Charlotte were on the deck together.  I wanted to show how one of them could self-entertain and the other was co-dependent. I had this whole post in mind about dogs, toddlers, and how seeing the two of them together made me miss Adria.  We used to debate at what age a toddler becomes smarter than Pancho.  Anytime one of her grandchildren would exhibit a new skill she would ask me in a very self-assured tone, "So, now who is smarter?"  And I'd always find a way to show how Pancho was still smarter.  To see Charlotte talking away, playing independently, and co-dependent Pancho doing nothing but starting at the door, I was going to give a tip of the hat to Adria.  I was going to use the video to acknowledge that it is clear that Charlotte has surpassed Pancho's intelligence across the board.  It's okay Pancho, you're still smarter than the cats.

But then around 20 seconds into the video, something kind of funny happened.  Charlotte had no idea I was filming her.  I could here her saying  "Hide and seek.  Hide and seek" (I am not sure if this is audible in the clip below) before poking her head from one side of the support beam on the deck to the other, as if it were a tree, and saying "It is me."  The close observer will note that this is exactly what the stupid dog (and all the other stupid Hello Kitty friends) is doing in Hide and Seek.  This is the first time I've seen her act out a scene from a book.

And so the Hello Kitty books remain in our library.

Cripes.