Reading and reading and reading

Inspired by the book challenge discussed in my previous post, I approached the Reading Sofa last night with Determination. In my hands were a. a Level 1 book about Scamper the Squirrel b. a junior high level book about asteroids c. Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant d. Moominland Midwinter. Scamper was for my 6 year old to read to me. He is having trouble becoming an independent reader; I think I read to him too much when he was younger, instead of weaning him, as it were--I made little effort to encourage him to read by himself, because I was so busy catering to his intellectual interests. So now we are wallowing in a sea of Scamper type books. There is little at "Level 1" that interests the Egyptologist/paleontologist/geologist, but he refuses to try anything harder. It was with great relief on both our parts that we abandoned Scamper and read the asteroid book.

All was going as planned--both boys were interested in the asteroids, until one blew up the earth in chapter 2 and my 3 year old decided he wanted no part of it.

We next turned to Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant, by Jack Prelutskey.The premise is quite amusing--I especially liked the Ballpoint Penguins and the Clocktopus, but I found the poetry a tad clunky. Sometimes the author seemed to be stretching too far for his rhymes. My 3 year old was vexed that the clocks in the picture of the Clocktopus didn't all tell the same time, directly contradicting the text. But all in all, we enjoyed it. Not as much as we did Omnibeasts, by Douglas Florian. Who could forget the crashing conclusion to his poem about the monarch butterfly (even though it, too, stretches a bit for the rhyme):

He is a Monarch, he is a Duke.

Swallows that swallow him

frequently puke.

Much hilarity ensues, and with the addition of a few well chosen words from the reader, they actually learn something...

Moominland Midwinter progresses, albeit slowly.