An Autobiography
The scattered story of a life lived in books. Books shape us, teach us to feel, comfort us, and ruin us irrevocably if read correctly. They change us.
Books are the affliction and the cure. And if you find one that is special enoug...
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When I found my old copy of this Sesame Street book starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover, it's gold spine tape was peeling away and the cover was missing, a casualty of childhood. The book was on my parents' basement shelves, having survived the purges and downsizing that inevitably follow both a transition into that empty-nesthood, and a move from one province to another.
I found another copy long ago, and having read it to my son (10) and my daughter (7), I can say with certainty my daughter loves it the most. We even found a phone app that is an interactive read-aloud that she still begs to listen to in lines and on road trips and waiting for swimming lessons to start.
The app is special because the words appear as an animation, the pages whisper and beg to be flipped, and the story is narrated by Grover himself. But what I adore about this book is how meta it is.
Grover talks to the reader pleading for you not to turn the page, which makes my daughter giggle with a sort of sadistic delight. Kids are sociopaths, what can I say? You can't help it, you love tormenting the poor guy.
I don't remember this story directly. It was too long ago when I was too young. My brain has undergone three major renovations since then. Rewiring neural pathways around the ages of 3, 13, and 23. I rely on second-hand recollections to supplement my memories.
Memory is a story you keep telling, and this is the story my mom tells me.
When I was little, learning to read, I always mispronounced the last line.
"Oh, I'm so debarrassed."
She's told me this story many times, a well-trod path in her memory palace that is so significant in the telling that from the first time I read this story to my kids, I was adding this memory as an additional part of the narrative. My daughter didn't mispronounce embarrassed except as a joke. But it's a sort of inside joke. It transports us in a small way so that a bit of childhood is shared.
My kids are not having the same kind of upbringing that I had, not by a longshot. Even with the same books.
But I feel as though I can infuse these stories with a shared sense of order and identity, helping my kids to feel as though they're part of the same gang, and hopefully helping them to appreciate the value of reading.
Reading comes in many forms, and before anyone dismisses the value of an app that reads the book aloud, just take a moment and recall the cassette tapes that often came with books in the 80s. Mercer Mayer's Little Critter comes to mind.
Picture a bright red cassette. Hear a kid's voice in your Sony Walkman. "I wanted to carry the groceries, just for you, but..." Hear a rrrrrip... "The bag broke." See the watercolour oranges rolling across the grass. Hear a springy sound of the grasshopper signalling for you to turn the page. Feel the paper under your wee fingers.
Reading should be enjoyable for kids, accessible, and not elitist. By tape or by app, a book in any form is still a book.
