"Do children know how to make up stories anymore?"

That's what my friend, Miriam, said to me in an email this morning. It gave me pause for thought.

I'd told her that I'm taking a wordless picture book with me today when I read with first graders at a local elementary school, and then with children at a community center later in the afternoon. The book is Fox and Hen Together by French author/illustrator Beatrice Rodriguez. I found it yesterday when I went looking for different and funny and potentially-engaging books to read with these children.

The illustrations tell a funny story about a chicken who lives with a fox and who goes fishing because there's nothing to eat in their refrigerator. Before she goes, she leaves her unhatched egg in the care of the fox.

There's plenty of potential there.

The fun part was that I was wrong about the first part of the story, and very pleasantly surprised by the ending. But in order to get to the ending, I had to tell myself a story as I went along. Some wordless picture books are simple, straight-forward stories. This one is more sophisticated. I thought it might be fun to read with the groups today and let them make up their own group stories.

Then Miriam asked if children know how to do that anymore.

I don't know.

Some do, I would guess. Others may not. Whenever I visit schools these days, I talk to the children about using their imaginations and keeping their eyes and ears open because stories are in the air around them. The teachers always thank me afterward for having said that. Their students don't use their imaginations anymore, they tell me. There's no need.

No need. That's pretty incredible to contemplate. People have been making up stories and telling, singing, drawing, and dancing them since time began. And now, at the height of civilization, we no longer need to do that?

I hope to be surprised today. The two reading groups are quite different, yes. But they're all children. Children are the people who sing to themselves and wear odd costumes, imagining themselves to be super heroes or princesses, or any other imagination-created character. It will be interesting to see what they make of Fox and Hen Together. I will let you know.

And, hopefully, I'll be able to email Miriam and say, "They sure do!"

An A-ha! literary moment

Okay, so here's what happened.

I went back to the community center yesterday, armed with five books which - let's face it - I was hoping would have a real effect on Dani and Darryl, the first graders I read with. My agenda was that they would hopefully see themselves in these stories about other African American children and the world of reading would suddenly open up, and the light in their eyes would go on, and they'd have a literary A-ha! moment.

It happened and it didn't happen.

Darryl was gone. In his place was Chris, a second grader. He dismissed all five picture books politely, but summarily.

Dani was next. I spread the books out on a table. Elizabeti's School. Princess Grace. I Lost My Tooth in Africa. Max Found Two Sticks. Piggy Pie Po (the only one about an animal.) Dani didn't seem bothered that they were picture books, but her rejection of almost all of them was immediate and viseral:

She didn't like Elizabeti. My instinct told me it was because the child's face was more real than pretty and because, in the illustration on the cover, she and the other children in her class all wore white uniforms in what appeared to be a rural village school setting.

The combination of not pretty and rural village were a no-go.

She didn't like Princess Grace. Again, I don't think the illustration of Grace on the cover was in accordance with Dani's personal standard of prettiness.

She didn't like Max because "I don't like sticks." And she didn't like the book about the tooth in Africa because she thought getting a chicken instead of a dollar when you lose a tooth was silly. When I told her that it was a real story, Dani said, "I don't like real stories."

We read Piggy Pie Po. Then Dani went and picked out another Fancy Nancy book.

"Why do you like these books?" I asked.

"Because she's fancy."

"But look at her," I said, picking up Princess Grace. "She's fancy. She's a princess. And she's your age."

"She is?"

"Yes." I quickly opened the book and started flipping through the pages so Dani would see the contemporary illustrations of Grace with her friends. I told Dani about the plot, that there's going to be a parade in school, and each class gets to choose two girls to be princesses on a float, and Dani wants to be one of them.

Dani said she'd been a princess last Halloween. She wore a "long pink dress and a tiara." Grace wore pink, too.

"So, do you want to read this one?" I asked.

She did.

I have to confess that I'd never read Princess Grace. In the story, Grace asks her Nana to sew her a costume for the "contest" to be chosen as one of the two princesses. When her Nana ask what kind of princess Grace wants to be, Grace doesn't know. Then Nana asks what a princess does and Grace doesn't know that, either.

I asked Dani what she thought a princess did. She thought for a long minute, and then she said, "She wears a beautiful long dress ... and she sits ... and she waves." (Dani did a very good royal wave. I swear, she had to have watched the Kate Middleton wedding.)

I kept reading. The book becomes an exploration of what princesses do, and what other kinds of princess there are in the world beside the Disney prototype. (Really, Disney, you have got a lot to answer for.) Grace's wise teacher tells them about several real princesses: Amina of Nigeria, who "led warriors into battle and built walls around all the villages," and Pin-Yang of China, "who started a women's army."

Dani was as surprised by that idea as Grace. She liked the illustrations of these princesses on magnificent horses, brandishing swords and surrounded by women warriors on horses. Then we came to an ingenious illustration of Princess Grace in her long pink dress having to face down a huge snake the way a Zimbabwean girl called Nyasha "who was kind to a snake that turned into a prince" had to.

Dani and I agreed that a princess needed a lot more than a long pink dress to face down a snake as big as that.

Then we came to the fine, fine part of the book where Nana sews a princess costume for Dani using some Kente cloth from The Gambia, and in the next picture all the children in the class are standing on a float in the parade (the teacher scrapped the contest; they all got to participate; go, teachers!) dressed in exotic costumes as princes and princesses from around the world. In the last illustration, Grace stands front and center. She's wearing an African costume and she has a gold band around her forehead and a heavy gold necklace around her neck. She's beautiful, and the pride and self-awareness in her face because of the costume she's wearing are genuine and effective.

"Look at those beautiful greens and yellows and browns and golds," I said, and Dani reached out and ran her hand up and down Grace's costume several times.

A-ha!

Bye-bye, pink princess.

We never did get to that Fancy Nancy book.

Short Books Shouldn't Be Stupid

Patricia Polacco came to Stamford recently. I went to her presentation at the Ferguson Library.
Before it started, and while families were milling around, I noticed a young woman with a huge satchel. She knelt down and started taking out new copies of many of Polacco's picture books and spreading them on the floor in front of her. Immediately, a bunch of kids clustered around.

As I watched, the woman let each child choose one book. It was for them to keep and to have Polacco sign at the end of her presentation. She must have handed out two dozen books. I had to find out what it was all about. So I asked her.

Her name was Ilana, and she was a librarian. She told me she'd started an after-school reading program at a community center located in a low income housing project in town. I asked if she needed volunteers. She did. I volunteered.

Last Wednesday, I read with my first two children. A first-grade girl and boy. Both were African American. The only faces I saw at the center were African American. It was chaotic; the kind of rabid energy and noise level you'd expect from a bunch of kids who've been cooped up in school all day.

I sat with each of my kids, one at a time, on a sagging couch in the library. The library was a glorified storage room, lined with bookshelves and books. Several middle school girls hung around, laughing and making noise. Ilana was showing younger kids how to make finger puppets out of construction paper at a round table in the corner.

The little girl's name was Dani. She was sharp as a tack and whipped right through her math homework. Then we started to read. The selection was slim. Dani picked a Fancy Nancy early reader. In those books, Nancy uses sophisticated, exotic words. I guess it's part of the books' attraction, but Dani couldn't make hide nor hair of them. There wasn't much of a plot that I can remember, but maybe it was because those sophisticated words kept popping up and interrupting everything. Dani's attention slowly drifted off so I told her to pick another book.

This time, she picked Ballet Barbie. Blond-haired, blue-eyed Barbie and her little side-kick, blond-haired, blue-eyed Kelly, dressed in costumes from various famous ballets. In this book, there was absolutely no plot. It was "When Barbie plays a good fairy, she dresses in white" and then an illustration of Barbie in a white tutu. When she plays a fire bird, she dresses in red. You may be able to see where this is going. I didn't.

Not until we came to the page that said, "When Barbie plays a bad swan .... she dresses in black." And there was bad swan Barbie in a black tutu and elaborate black headdress.

That was kind of a low moment for me. Once in which I wondered what I was doing there and what possible difference I could make, and how a sweet 6-year-old African American girl could learn self-pride if the only books she's offered to read have blond-haired, blue-eyed characters who wear black to designate badness.

Then I read with Darryl. He's in the first grade, too. He did not want to sit still, and insisted on picking a book that was far too difficult for him, and whenever I tried to help him sound out a word in it, he got very indignant. He basically told his own version of the story, which is pretty typical of emerging readers and is fine, if that's the stage they're at.

Then he picked an early reader about the Lion King because he recognized the lions on the cover. This one made absolutely no sense. I couldn't follow the silly, truncated story. I couldn't tell one lion from the other, or figure out what on earth was going on, and neither could Darryl. But it was Lion King and he'd seen that in the movies. The connection was enough.

Except, it wasn't and it's not.

Even very short books have to be about something. What they're about has to matter to the children who are reading them. They have to have plots. They have to have characters who want something, but who can't get it, for whatever reason, so they try and try and eventually, something good happens.

They can be silly. Silly is good. But what they're about has to matter.

Early readers and chapter books are among the most important books in a child's reading life. If you don't hook a child early, if you don't show them that what they'll find in books is the stuff of life, that books matter and can help them because they reflect an understanding of the reader and their world and what is important to them, then children turn off as readers.

Just because something is short doesn't mean it can be stupid.

Children can turn off to reading as early as first grade. Second grade and third grade are critical. Ask any teacher and she'll tell you that many boys drop off the face of the reading earth, starting in the fourth grade.

I'm going back to read again today. I went to the library and got some books to read to Dani and Darryl. All, except for one, have African American characters. One's about a little girl on her first day of school. Another's called I Lost My Tooth in Africa, and is written by Penda Diakite. Another is Max Found Two Sticks, written and illustrated by the wonderful Brian Pinkney. There's one called Princess Grace, and, yes, she's African American.

The only one that's not is Piggy Pie Po by Audrey & Don Wood. I picked that just for the sheer joy of reading the silly rhyming words. It's just plain fun to read. Easy, too.

The only trouble is, they're all picture books. Emerging readers are very proud people. They don't want anyone to think they're reading baby books. I'll be interested to see how this goes.

I want Dani and Darryl to be able to see themselves in a book. I'm hoping their eyes light up and that they grab those books and want me to read them all the way through. But I know there's at least a 50-50 chance they'll turn up their noses for being too young.

We shall see.

All any of us can do is try.