KC Christmas

Let's Read a Story, Grandpa!

K.C.'S CHRISTMAS

If this Christmas I must choose between purchasing a book or a video for K.C., I'll go for the book. Between us, I already have!

K.C. is three and one-half years old. In a world of television and computers, nothing holds a candle to her love for books.

K.C. has a library card. She's had it for two years now and at least once every couple of weeks, she borrows a whack of books and plugs through them. Normally this is not a big deal. A lot of people read.

K.C., however, can't quite read. She's close. She knows the alphabet; she can put together words and pictures by association, rather as if the words were pictographs in their own right, and she's beginning to grasp that the conjunction of some letters in the alphabet are words, words with meaning.

K.C. met the Grinch in a book long before she saw the video. She visited Oz on paper long before she encountered Oz on celluloid. She follows Franklin the Turtle, Arthur the Aardvark, Lowly Worm and Huckle Cat of Busytown fame on PBS because she first met them in her books. To her critical eye the electronic versions tend to hold up pretty well. Occasionally she takes issue with an episode and hits her personal library collection for proof positive of the "real story."

As for TV, K.C. has learned to mute, change

channels and as often to shut down the

accursed beast. She tolerates CNN's

talking heads when adults are watching them.

They provide white noise and predictable

animation while she is sculpting with her play

dough or doing a jigsaw puzzle. On the kids'

show side, cutesy patronizing adults who offer

little more than Early Childhood Education degrees and pasted on smiles get zapped or ignored every time. In fairness, she does give them fifteen seconds of her life to prove they have something of value -- entertainment, education, or otherwise. K.C. will not be conned.

K.C. enjoys operating the computer and navigates the internet like a pro. She moves an icon more quickly across a screen with her mouse than Pavlov could move his dogs. She prints, saves, and deletes on the old 486 she's come to treat as her own. She works through puzzles, mazes, and games. She does online coloring, always opting for more complex choices, like "rainbows" or "grass" or "marble," and she maintains her own bookmarks. The same critical eye she applies to TV is equally sharp when she's surfing for new kid sites on the web.

Every night at our house there is a time when the TV and computer are shut down. Supper is done, horseplay is done, the bath is done. K.C. then selects from three to five books from her collection and for sometimes an hour we read stories together. Once in a while she pronounces herself "tired" and hies herself off to bed with the unread books on her pillow next to her stuffed animals.

I marvel at K.C.'s acuity. She is an

unchained Pacman gobbling knowledge.

TV provides some; the Internet provides

some; interaction at pre-school/day care

provides a common learning environment.

But these things don't provide much

history or much foundation for using

information. In my view, at least, books

provide two key developmental elements --

"permanence" and "fantasy."

Does Mother Goose have relevance today? K.C. says "Yes." What about Aesop's Fables? "You bet." The Emperor's New Clothes? Selections from Grimms? These classics address generic issues sometimes, and as often are just fun. K.C. recently vetoed a contemporary children's book that decried eating ice cream, candy, and other junk food and talked about tooth cavities and high sugar levels. The book's tone was negative for her in a world where the word "No" has become more of an adult litany than a child's reality. K.C. is cool about it though. She knows adults have to push their agenda and she is remarkably tolerant, up to a point.

K.C. has a variety of books to choose from. Her personal library probably numbers a hundred or so by now. She knows every one, plus past and present library offerings. I have noticed she leans towards classics. They are traditional, they are fantastic. They bring tears and hoots of laughter, and mostly, they bring dreams of princesses and princes and of monsters and dragons overcome. Magic seems to occupy an important part of her early childhood consciousness and does not appear to interfere with her daily round where, in fact, she is the most pragmatic of children I've known over many years of parenting and grandparenting.

The book reading, the act itself, the hour or half-hour or even ten minutes, is a shared activity -- far more interactivity than the act of a semi-comatose adult and a bored child watching a Blues Clues rerun.

Nor is there a feeling of being rushed. One can flip back to look at a different picture, even read a book from back to front. All things are possible.

If this Christmas I must choose between a book or a video for K.C., I'll go for the book. Between us, I already have! The complete Land of Oz series by L. Frank Baum. Too old for her, maybe, but there are lots of pictures and she's already familiar with the basic premise. No doubt about it, we'll have fun!

Arthur (Art) Montague