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.