Tag: reading to children

On pandemic-era incarceration.

On pandemic-era incarceration.

During the first year and a half of the Covid-19 pandemic, the local county jail wouldn’t admit volunteers. Incarceration in the United States sounds crummy most of the time, but most of the people I’ve communicated with have said that things were even worse during the pandemic: more fear, more tension, fewer opportunities to do much of anything either than sit & worry.

Around that time, the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project – an organization that sends free books to people who are incarcerated – received many letters like this:

“The prison I am at has us on 23 hour a day lockdown due to the coronavirus threat. We also lost access to most jobs around the prison, visits, library, and a lot of other things that help relieve stress, like sports, walking track, weight-lifting, church, etc.

So books will be a huge help, we are three-deep to a cell and I can’t say I always enjoy the company.”

And also –a la Baudelaire’s “oasis of horror in a desert of boredom” – we received some terrifying stories from people who got very sick:

“On Sept 1st I was Covid-positive, on Sept 4 shortly after 6 a.m. I was rushed to the hospital. I was on a ventilator & in paralytic coma for 6 ½ days. Both lungs free of pneumonia, I have now been diagnosed with stress-induced cardiomyopathy due to Covid. I am back at the prison. My voice sounds like a man (LOL).”

#

There are almost always communicable diseases circulating through the jails and prisons. That’s certainly still been true during the Covid-19 pandemic: in southern Indiana, vaccine uptake is relatively low, especially among the population of people usually targeted for incarceration. Still, volunteers began visiting the jail again as soon as we were allowed – during stressful times, people need more support and kindness than usual, not less.

For the past few months, the administration has been letting us bring equipment to record people reading books for their kids. Then librarians at our excellent local library send the video and a paper copy of the book to the person’s kids.

After a Sunday morning recording session, someone was telling me a bit about her recent experience:

“We’ve got three levels of security in the women’s block right now, so we’re on lockdown about 22 hours a day. They only let us out to the common area one level at a time.”

“Breakfast at 4:30, why I was feeling a sleepy. They do have coffee at commissary, instant coffee. Commissary’s a little tough, the prices of everything have gone up but they didn’t raise the weekly cap, so you can get a little less each week. My parents have been putting money in my commissary, but you can’t do more than the cap.”

“My parents have been taking good care of me, thank God, not that I deserve it.”

Which always breaks my heart to hear somebody say. She deserves help. We all do.

I doubt there’s anyone among us who would be pleased to have people always associate us with the worst things we’d ever done. Or have our worst moments mulled over by judges and prosecutors and public defenders, then written up in someone else’s words and stored in a permanent file.

I’ve certainly done bad things & broken laws: I had the good fortune to not be caught. (Good fortune, plus pale skin, masculine frame, upper-class accent, apartments in wealthy, less-policed areas …) I drove with drugs in my car. And I definitely hurt people – started petty arguments, callously trampled feelings – in ways that aren’t illegal, but I’d still feel awful having those moments replayed again and again, discussed in a courtroom, treated as though those smallest, meanest moments were the essence of me, the most important thing for somebody to know about me.

In Just Mercy, lawyer Bryan Stevenson writes that:

“I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others.”

“But simply punishing the broken – walking away from them or hiding them from sight – only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.”

“I frequently had difficult conversations with clients who were struggling and despairing over their situations – over the things they’d done, or had been done to them, that had led them to painful moments. Whenever things got really bad, and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that each of us is more than the worst things we’ve ever done.”

“I told them that if someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you are not just a thief.”

#

In jail that day, I tried to say something vaguely similar. But at the end of our recording session, I got to return to my loving family. I got to read a book to my children while hugging them.

She went back to the block, waiting for us to mail a DVD of her reading & a copy of the book to her kids. Which isn’t the same, and isn’t enough.

On grammar in Latin and English.

On grammar in Latin and English.

I spent most of my time during high school doodling in notebooks – during an entire year of biology, the only thing I learned was that the word for several fish of a single type is “fish,” but the word for several fish of different species is “fishes.” 

For dissections – earthworms, giant crickets, pig hearts, and frogs – we were partnered with whomever sat at the table with us.  My partner always brought the newspaper and ostentatiously checked stock prices during class.  The kid in front of me spent a few weeks reading A Confederacy of Dunces. 

My eyesight wasn’t good enough to read over her shoulder.

At least the distinction between fish and fishes turned out to be correct.  My statistics teacher was a baseball coach – he didn’t know calculus, so the only explanation he gave for the workings of a Gaussian distribution was that the numbers were printed on a chart. 

The baseball team had a winning record, though. 

Even in English class, my brain was filled with junk.  We were taught not to split infinitives or end sentences with prepositions.  These are sensible rules in Latin.  An infinitive – like “to read” – is a single word in Latin, so it would be quite strange to put another word in the middle.  Latin also has strict rules about word order — a sentence would be garbled if the preposition was in the wrong place.

But we weren’t learning Latin!  We were learning English, and – lo and behold! – the grammar rules of English are different.  In English, word order is flexible.  A lot of nuance comes from the arrangement of our sentences.  English doesn’t have as many tenses as other languages – there’s no subjunctive – so we English speakers need to scrape out nuance where we can.

In my high school English class, we were also taught not to use “their” as a singular possessive.  Even now, I rarely do – I don’t write “Each student brought their book,” I instead sacrifice the meaning of my sentences and write things like “Students brought their books.”

I was hoodwinked!  Instead of using the word “their” as a singular pronoun – which it is, in English – I trusted my teachers when they claimed that this word was exclusively plural.

Hogwash!  The equivalent claim would be to say that it’s incorrect to write:

You are reading this essay.

After all, “you” is a plural pronoun.  And “are” is the plural conjugation of the verb “to be,” which I used only to match the expected conjugation of the pronoun “you.”  The correct thing to write is:

Thou is reading this essay.

See?  There’s only one person reading, so I need a singular pronoun, “thou,” and a singular conjugation, “is.”

From What’s Your Pronoun? by Dennis Baron, I learned that the pronoun “they” has been used as a singular since the 1300s.

In a sense, singular you is even more of a newcomer on the pronoun scene.  The plural you was applied as a singular pronoun to address royalty as early as the thirteenth century and was used in other situations demanding deference and formality – call the monarch thy majesty instead of your majesty and it could mean off with your head.

But you doesn’t appear as a singular in all contexts until the 1600s, when it slowly, slowly starts pushing out thou, thee, thy, and thine, second-person singulars that English speakers had been using since the days of Beowulf.  The th- singulars persist even now in some English dialects, and nineteenth-century grammar books regularly demanded singular thou and thee, along with thy and thine, even though these pronouns were no longer considered standard English.

It consoled me somewhat to read that students have long been taught outdated, inaccurate information.  It’s not just my brain that was filled with rubbish.

When a cabal of misogynistic grammarians worked to replace singular they with he in English textbooks, people tried to protest. 

In 1885, in an article titled “The New Pronoun,” the Atlanta Constitution printed:

There is nothing awkward or ungrammatical in [singular they] so far as the construction of English is concerned.  It is ungrammatical when measured by the Latin method – but what has Latin grammar to do with the English tongue?

If you wanted, you could even make a scientific argument for the validity of singular they – in quantum mechanics, the state of each single particle is described by a superposition of states.  Immediately after a measurement, wavefunctions can “collapse” to be composed primarily of a unique form – after a photon passes through a polarizer, it’s fluctuation will be parallel to the polarizer’s axis.  But even this “up and down” state can be expressed as an equal superposition of two perpendicular polarizations tilted forty-five degrees.  Indeed, the latter expression is the only useful way to describe this photon if it’s about to pass through a second polarizer tilted forty-five degrees from the first.

We are not monolithic.  Each and all of us can be described as an amalgam of many different traits.

But we don’t need any scientific justification for the use of singular they in English.  This grammatical usage is deeply enshrined in our language, and the singular pronoun “they” can best convey the plenitude of many individual humans’ identity & experience.

It’s still difficult for me to use the word “they” as a singular pronoun in formal sentences – my crummy education was pernicious.  The proscriptions are deeply ingrained in my brain.  But I’d like to think that I’m not totally calcified in my ways.  And I’m quite grateful that Denis Baron prepared such an erudite history of English pronoun usage.  What’s Your Pronoun​? is a lovely little book.

I hope that my kids’ brains will be less muddled than my own.  When we read stories aloud, we typically correct unnecessarily gendered language.  Girls and boys become kids.  An actress is an actor, too.  Our Curious George lives in a world of fire fighters and police officers.

I was reading Rob Harrell’s gorgeous Monster on the Hill to our kids when our three-year-old interrupted me.  At first, I couldn’t understand what she was saying.  I asked her to repeat herself.

“You should say spouse.”

from Rob Harrell’s Monster on the Hill

She was right, of course.  I’d unthinkingly read the text as written.  So I felt embarrassed … for a moment.  Then I remembered to feel proud.

On kind, environmentalist, and vegan books for kids.

On kind, environmentalist, and vegan books for kids.

Our children love books.  We visit the public library every Friday and typically exit with one or two full tote bags (the only exception being days when our kids are so upset at the thought of leaving the library that they start yelling, at which point we might fail to check out any of the books we’d set aside).

At home, our children spend an hour or two each day reading.  Our preschooler actually knows how; our two-year-old flips through the pages of his favorites and recites aloud as much of the text as he remembers.  With his current favorites, like The Itchy Book, Potato Pants, or I Will Take a Nap, his versions are quite close to the printed edition.

Before our four year old learned to read, I never would have expected how sad her growth would make me feel.  She still curls up in my arm to hear bedtime stories, and she likes to read comic strips together for the chance to have jokes explained to her, but she’s been devouring The Magic Treehouse series and early chapter books by Beverly Cleary on her own.

Our family is fairly liberal.  We devote a lot of our free time to advocacy for environmental causes, veganism, justice, gender equality … and, when I read books to our children, I often change the words. 

In Owl at Home, our readings have Owl telling winter, “Do not come back,” as the text reads, but we also add “until you have changed your ways.”  Because, the kids agree, everyone should have a chance to grow; we all make mistakes and could use second chances.

In The Snowy Day, Peter tries to join “the big kids” in their snowball fight before realizing that he isn’t quite old enough yet.

And in many books, we change the foods that characters are eating.  Our kids love animals, and it’s easier for them to enjoy a story if the characters have tofu or vegetables on their plates instead of an animal.

But sometimes it’s nice to have a beautiful book that needs no substitutions.  I trawled through a few lists of vegan kids’ books, but many of these, like Dave Loves Chickens, are blatantly ideological texts that don’t quite work as stories.  And so, in case you were looking for recommendations, here are a few of our family’s favorites.

The Great Pig Escape by Eileen Christelow tells the story of a group of pigs who escape from a truck when a pair of farmers are taking them to market.  When the piglets first arrive, one of the farmers remarks that they’re cute, but the other reminds her, “Eight months from now they’ll be pork chops, so don’t go falling in love with them!”

But the pigs are lovable, and quite clever too.  They sabotage the farmers’ truck in a way that will abet their escape, then later steal clothes to disguise themselves as regular civilians.  (Lest you worry that the book encourages thievery, you should know that the pigs later mail a package full of clothing, returning everything they took.  Everyone is overjoyed to receive their belongings back – except the farmers, who receive a cheerful postcard instead of their lost pigs.)

We also purchased a copy to give to our local farmed animal sanctuary … after using watercolors and packing tape to modify the art so that the pigs were escaping to that sanctuary instead of to Florida.

The Dog House by Jan Thomas features a quartet of animal friends who accidentally toss their ball into a spooky doghouse.  One by one the animals go inside, attempting to retrieve the ball, but they don’t come out again.  Eventually only the mouse is left and he whimpers, “Won’t you come back out, duck?”  But a big, scary-looking dog stomps outside to say, “No, because I’m having duck for dinner!”

The mouse is horrified – someone is eating his friend!

Except that the dog is having duck stay as a guest – the animals all share a tasty vegan meal with parsnips and other vegetables.

Our family lives with a big, scary-looking pit bull, as well as a rather wolf-like hound dog … both of whom are vegan.

Me, Jane by Patrick McDonnell tells the story of Jane Goodall learning how to quietly observe nature, the skill that enabled her scientific discoveries.  There are several charming children’s books about Jane Goodall (we also like The Watcher by Jeanette Winter, which describes her research in more detail), but we love McDonnell’s art. 

When our preschooler first learned to read, she favored comic strips.  She had recently turned four and loved Calvin and Hobbes.  Heck, I love Calvin and Hobbes too.  But I’m a wee bit older than four.  I’d like to think that I have a good grasp on the concepts like irony and antiheroes.  Our child did not.  She asked, “Mama, what’s a poopy head?” because Hobbes had slung that insult at Calvin.  Well, that’s not ideal, but, fine.  Kids are eventually going to learn salty language.

Worse, our kid’s behavior tanked.  She started raging, battling her sibling, kicking dust at the playground … when we pulled her aside to talk about that last activity, she explained, “Calvin says it’s the best part of playing baseball!”

Well, yes, there is a comic strip where Calvin says that.  I had to explain that grown-ups think it’s funny because Calvin is doing the wrong thing.  Our kid nodded, but the expression on her face made me think that she was dubious.

So I wound up hiding all our Calvin and Hobbes.  Soon after, I hid all our Peanuts, which also feature kids acting less kindly than we would like.

But McDonnell’s Mutts?  Mutts can stay.  The characters are mostly gentle and kind, and we feel confident that McDonnell shares our passion for treating both our neighbors and our planet with respect.

So Me, Jane is a book about a prominent vegan activist that is written and drawn by a prominent vegan cartoonist.  But it’s not sanctimonious in the least – it’s values are like deep currents, coursing beneath the text.  I would feel comfortable sharing that book with any child, even if I knew nothing about the parents’ political beliefs, because the only explicit statements stress the value of patience and hard work.

Gus’s Garage by Leo Timmers features a asiduous mechanic who lets nothing go to waste.  The book begins with a large mound of what appears to be useless junk next to Gus’s small shop, but as various animals arrive and describe their travails, Gus is able to engineer solutions to their problems with the materials he has on hand.

Again, there is no explanation given in the text for why Gus lives the way he does.  And I like that – because the message is so subtle, a wide range of people could enjoy this book.  Gus is both resourceful and ingenious, in a way that might evoke the survival skills that many Americans of my grandmother’s generation developed during the Great Depression, and which exemplifies the “reduce, re-use, recycle” mantra taught to elementary schoolchildren of my own generation.

Plus, the art is excellent and the sing-song rhymes are a pleasure to read aloud.

Julia’s House for Lost Creatures by Ben Hatke beautifully conveys why a family needs rules: a fair set of rules can allow a group of very different individuals to live together peacefully.  Interested in talking to a two- or three-year-old about the refugee crisis?  There is a troll who arrives at Julia’s door after fleeing political turmoil at home (the city has torn down his bridge).  Trying to introduce your children to the concept of chores?  Julia eventually crafts a “chore chart,” giving everyone a manageable task that relies upon the guests’ unique talents.

(Perhaps I should mention, since I’m including Julia’s House for Lost Creatures in a list of vegan children’s books, that one picture depicts the imp-like folletti roasting something that looks very much like a chicken in the oven.  Since our kids have never seen this food, I’m not sure they ever realized.  And, besides, we’ve talked to them about veganism as a way of being kind – and this book is exceptionally kind.)

For slightly older children, you could try the early reader chapter book Ellie and the Good Luck Pig by Callie Barkley.  This is part of The Critter Club series, about a group of friends (when we read this aloud, we always change “the girls” into “the friends” or “the kids” … our preschooler will actually make substitutions like this on her own when she reads aloud to her sibling) who form something like an animal shelter in a neighbor’s barn. 

I had originally assumed that the kids in The Critter Club, who bonded over their love of animals, would all be vegetarian, but no such luck.  And perhaps it’s worth mentioning that I personally find the entire series to be like the literary equivalent of cotton candy.  There are some kids’ books, like Nate the Great, that I enjoy as much or more than my kids do … but not these.  Still, I’m not the target audience.  Our preschooler loves these.  The characters typically undergo some form of mild conflict that is just complicated enough for her to understand.  And a perfectly happy resolution will come after a few dozen pages.

In Ellie and the Good Luck Pig, the piglet is adopted by someone who runs a sanctuary for famed animals. 

Our family doesn’t manage to volunteer at our local farmed animal sanctuary as often as we did before having kids, but we’ve still gone several times in the last few years for me to pitch in some work.  Our kids like visiting – they especially like getting to see the pigs – but the drive is hard.

I’ve heard it gets easier, though.  Eventually they’ll grow up.  They’ll be able to sit quietly – reading, no doubt – in the car for a few hours at a time.

And I’ll feel sad.  Their intellectual journeys will leave me behind.

But I hope that we will have set them off in the right direction.