The whole family went to the library today. Chesh decided he wanted to get his own library card. We went to the children's library, but he enjoys books written for teens and they're short enough that he actually has the time to read through them with his busy schedule. We actually stopped in between his interviews and errands. We've all gotten a lot done this week! We thought it would be a fun break from all the crazy running around to kick back and take the family to the library, all of us, as a family.
As I said, Chesh actually picked out some books! I'm glad he did because I think I would have had my hands too full to enjoy the library without him! My littlest decided he wanted to run around crazy. There were so many books that he didn't know which one to pull down and look at first! He mostly just wanted to turn the pages like the older two were doing. I think he was a little overwhelmed by the shelves and shelves of books. He found a chair to sit on that spun around (he's never sat on an office chair that he remembers). He discovered they had a whole table and chair set that was just his size! He even yelled at Chesh when he went to see what the little one was up to. He held his hand out and screamed as if to say, "No, Dad! You can't sit in this chair! It's just for kids!" He even learned that sitting at a desk can be pretty cool, especially when they have a little keyboard drawer to pull out, even if there's no computer or keyboard at it. Leave it to him to come up with a million and one ways to enjoy exploring the library!
My older son was very interested that they had a whole library book all about "his birthday". He knows April Fool's Day isn't a holiday just about him, but he's convinced he's special because no one else in the family has their birthday on a holiday every year. He says he's a fool because he's an April Fool, and that means it's his job to make everyone happy all the time. Thankfully, he does that by being very silly and rarely serious (unless he needs to be) so he doesn't even have to work too hard for that, and when he can't cheer someone up, he doesn't feel bad about it. He knows he tried and that's good enough for him. As he puts it, "People just need a sad day sometimes." What wisdom for a four-year-old! He also wanted to get out every book on Halloween and a book about Native American fables. I really wanted to tell him he could take out the book on my card, but I know he's not ready for the responsibility of a library book, so I'd have to watch it like a hawk for him. With everything else we have going on right now, I just wasn't ready for that added responsibility. I told him if it's still there next time we visit (which may be sooner rather than later!) we'll get it out for him. He's already excited for his birthday. I promised him that as soon as he turns five, we can take him to get his own library card. He's already putting together a list of things he wants to get books about!
However, it was Bunny Boo that surprised me today! Originally she said she wanted to renew one book and pick out seven more, since she can have ten books out at a time now. She decided she would keep two slots on her card open for movies. Then, when we were counting her books so we could leave it turned out she had eleven books! She decided to put one back (it was about voting in America) and we'd get it next time. Since she was so thrilled about her book selection, I decided to get a movie out on my card for her. She was thrilled!
What surprised me more than her ambitious selection to take out so many books (that I would have to read with her because she's getting good at reading, but still prefers I read the long books to her), were the books she selected. The book she wanted on Halloween wasn't there, not surprising since Halloween is just around the corner, but she did pick out Halloween
by Dennis Brindell Fradin and Halloween: Why We Celebrate It the Way We Do
by Martin Hintz and Kate Hintz. I know my daughter and her love of holidays, so that didn't surprise me. Given Thanksgiving is not that far after Halloween, she decided to pick up Thanksgiving Day: A Time to Be Thankful
as a part of the Finding Out About The Holidays series and The True Story of the First Thanksgiving
from the What Really Happened series. She also thought P Is for Pilgrim: A Thanksgiving Alphabet
would be fun since she enjoys M Is For Mayflower: A Massachusetts Alphabet
so much. Both of my older kids seem to love the Alphabet Books Series. It combines a holiday with Pilgrims! What could be cooler? None of these selections really surprised me, not knowing my daughter the way I do.What I didn't expect my daughter to select were a couple books from two different parts of history that we haven't talked about. One was only a little surprising. The other was a huge shock, given we'd talked about the subject before several times and she thought it was the most boring thing in the world every time we tried to bring it up, even recently. The first two books that weren't such as surprise were Let Women Vote
from the Spotlight on American History series and You Wouldn't Want to Be a Suffragist!: A Protest Movement That's Rougher Than You Expected
from the series of books bearing similar names. The kids have all been watching Mary Poppins
(almost to death) and Mrs. Banks just so happens to be a Suffragette. I have to admit, I kind of expected her to find interest in the Women's Suffrage movement eventually, what with her mother being a feminist and all. We read You Wouldn't Want to Be a Suffragist already and she had a lot of opinions about it. We talked about the feminist movement, how some people to this day think women aren't as good as men. She asked about why I changed my name when I got married, then we talked about how in some states, such as Texas, a baby born when a woman is married is required by law to take the husband's last name, whether the wife wants the child to have her husband's last name or not. For example, if my last name was hyphenated, like...say...Smith-Adams, and my husband's last name was Adams and was never hyphenated, all of my children's names would have to be Adams unless I went through a legal name change to have it changed to Smith, or Smith-Adams. We also talked about the way some people think jobs, like being a scientist, doctor, or engineer, aren't women's jobs, and sometimes women have to work twice as hard to prove they're just as good, if not better than the men. I had personal experience with that in my robotics class in high school. Several times the teacher asked one of the boys to help me because "they were stronger" or he "didn't want me getting hurt". The boys didn't want to work with me because no one wanted to be put on a build team with a girl. It was frustrating. She didn't think that was very fair at all. We talked about how the Women's Suffrage Movement actually paved the way for a lot of the progress more modern feminists have made. It was a wonderful conversation and I can't wait until we can sit down with that other book. I'm even learning something too!Now that I've gotten way off track, the subject my daughter was never interested in before, no matter how much we tried to get her interested? Mummies. Bunny Boo isn't really interested in much about Ancient Egypt, but mummies are a sudden fascination of hers. Perhaps it's because there are mummies in so many cultures from all over the world, even modern mummies. Of course, it's also Halloween, and that might have something to do with it. The first book she picked out before we even got to the section where the Halloween books would be (since she said that was the first place she wanted to look) was Mummies: Truth and Rumors
from the Truth and Rumors series. Shortly after she picked out the holiday books she wanted, she saw a binding with a word she definitely knew how to read Mummy
from the Eyewitness Books series. I could have sworn we had that book at home, but she swears we didn't. Only thing I can think is maybe I'd seen it before, either when I was in school or when I was working as a nanny. We haven't read through the Eyewitness book yet, but she loved the Truth and Rumors book. She had a good time trying to guess if each story was true or a rumor. It contained some really fun facts and some fancy new words that she'd never heard before, like cholera, cryonic freezing, cremate, asphalt, embalmer, and resin. She was thrilled to know that the oldest mummy known in existence was actually a dinosaur, not a person, and that there was a mummified baby mammoth too. She's decided that mummies are now the new cool and interesting thing to know anything about, as well as archaeologists. She thinks the most fascinating thing about archaeologists is trying to put together ideas about what people they've never met are doing from clues like the things they used, the pictures they drew, and the monuments and buildings they left behind. I think her interest in mummies is going to take us far beyond the realm of mummies and into a whole new realm of discovery about history, learning about things that happened because there's some great mystery to solve. You don't know anything about the people. You can't talk to them. You just have to solve the mystery. Now that I think about it, a friend of hers did have a live action/role play mystery birthday party, so maybe that's where she picked up her new love of mysteries.While my daughter isn't a strong reader, I really do hope that reading to her about subjects that interest her will show her all she can learn from books and will encourage her to read more. She's got the skills, and she's got the ability, now all she has to do is find a reason to apply herself. We've had both good days and bad days, so I'm hoping that it won't be long before she's realized that books and the library are her passport to anywhere she might want to go. If she learns to read on her own, she won't need to wait for me to sit down and read to her. She'll be able to read anything she wants whenever she wants, whether it's a fun story, or something she can learn from. I can only hope that she'll learn to love books just as much as I do! Thankfully, I don't think her brothers will have near as much of a problem. They both love books and can't seem to keep their hands off of them. Both of them already love the idea of reading, so maybe I'll be lucky.
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