Mr. Rogers Lives On, and so do Books
On my daughter’s day off from kindergarten yesterday we watched our usual array of PBS shows, including old favorites like Clifford and Sesame Street, plus new ones like the cute and fun Super Y. But the one I was most excited to see was good ol’ Mr. Rogers.
He’s so wonderful, from his gentle manner and Land of Make-Believe to his ability to take the kids on “field trips” to all manner of places. But the biggest treat yesterday was when he pulled out the book called, A is for Animals, by David Pelham, a delightful ABC pop-up book with gorgeous pictures and fascinating animals such as the quetzel, the narwhal, and unicornfish. My daughter took one look at the book on TV and ran to get our own copy of it. She turned page after page as Mr. Rogers took her through the book, reading it in his wonderful way.
People love to complain about kids’ lack of reading these days. They moan and groan about how children “just aren’t taught the value of a good book.” I’m going to take this moment to disagree — at least for today.
Pizza Hut’s Book-It program is an active one at my kids’ school. Each month they read books to earn a free pizza. For my son, who is older, this includes a different aspect each month, whether it be writing a story map to go with the books, an outline of characters, setting, and theme, or merely a paragraph explaining his favorite part of the book.
Each week my kids take trips to the school library to get books (which won’t happen this week since, following the water curse we’ve been talking about this week, a water pipe broke in the media center. Augh!), and in their classes someone is assigned as the week’s librarian to shuttle books back and forth on days they don’t visit the library as a group.
Our school holds at least two Scholastic book fairs each year (which was going to happen this week and is also postponed due to the water pipe break), and kids bring home their wish lists from the wonderful display of books.
The school has visiting authors and illustrators. This year it was Constance McGeorge , who writes the Boomer books, while last year it was Mike Wimmer, illustrator of such books as Homerun: The Story of Babe Ruth, and Summertime.
They also do lots with books in their classes. My son’s class is reading Beverly Cleary’s The Mouse and the Motorcycle right now. A fun book that the kids enjoy reading.
So all in all, I have to say the teachers are doing a great job getting my kids interested in reading. Why else would my son come down one morning this week to tell me that he stayed up and read his entire Captain Underpants book before going to sleep the night before?
Somehow I couldn’t get mad. After all, it wasn’t all that long ago when I was the one hiding under the sheets with a flashlight to read “just one more chapter.”
In fact, I still have to fight the urge to stay up till the wee hours to finish a book. Unfortunately, I usually have far too much common sense to do it.
But now that I’m done with my blog, maybe I’ll read just one more chapter of Dragon Rider, by Cornelia Funke…
