Love of Reading Week

We were asked to send our schedule to the coordinator.  We provide the availability, she would assign us to the classrooms.  All we had to do was bring ourselves and the book(s) we chose to read aloud to the appropriate classroom at the appropriate time.

My schedule arrived, then arrived again with the classroom numbers included, then didn't arrive which I didn't know until I showed up 4 hours earlier than expected in a 3rd grade classroom and that teacher printed out the revised version.

I'm not complaining.  The new schedule allowed me a break for breakfast bagel sandwich at a nearby cafe.

Fully fortified, I gardened and read and realized, once again, that not everyone has had the same upbringing as I did.

For the first graders, I read Pickle Things, a sure fire winner with its rhymes about pickle things you never see.  The third graders were treated to the d'Aulaire's verbiage and illustrations of Greek Myths, the fifth graders dove into an illustrated copy of The Odyssey.  

The younger ones learned about Hermes boring Argus of the 100 eyes to death, marveling at the notion that the eyes they've seen at the zoo on the peacock's feathers were once attached to an ancient human and that the notion of being bored to death had its roots in ancient stories.

The fifth grade was treated to a picture of Polyphemus the Cyclops king with a sharpened, heated, wooden spike being driven through the eyeball in the middle of his forehead.  Crafty Ulysses's hug the bottoms of the sheep so we can escape the cave ruse was somewhat less impactful.

Everybody got poems, too.  Billy Collins on Turning Ten was a little too ephemeral for the 10 and 11 year olds in 5th grade.  Ogden Nash's Who wants my jellyfish/ I'm not selly-fish missed the mark entirely, as did The Lord in his wisdom made the fly/And then forgot to tell us why.  Word play that resonates with my grandkids landed with a thunk at Prince.  

A fifth grader wondered if the myths were fiction or non-fiction.  Roll that question around in your brain for a moment before you jump to a conclusion.  Did the ancients consider them to be literal truths, non-fiction in this student's view?  Without science, perhaps they did.  Now, though?  I was flummoxed, the teacher smiled but offered no assistance, so I punted.

It's like Aesop's Fables... you know Aesop's Fables, right?

Their blank looks astounded me.  I've already come to terms with the fact that little ones are no longer read nursery rhymes at bedtime, but being unaware of the fables and their morals?  This was news to me.  

Missing out on silly rhymes about the Black Death (Ring Around the Rosy) or the British monarchy (Jack and Jill) doesn't seem like much of a loss.  But the fables are a shorthand for morality and consequences.  Sour grapes, slow and steady wins the race, the list goes on and on.  Those morals were the underpinnings of my ethical education, though I didn't realize it at the time.  

What are my scholars using instead?  Does Bluey fill the gap?  

In any event, I know what I'm reading to everyone next year.