For example, the appeal of Calvin and Hobbes. My nine-year old son Manuel loves Calvin and Hobbes. He doesn’t read them from the everyday comic book strips in the newspaper like his mother used to do. He reads them from the book compilations he can borrow from his school library. And boy, it is not a problem getting him to read at all. At the breakfast table, in the car or sitting back in bed before going to sleep – Calvin and Hobbes makes him linger and laugh out loud.
This morning he shared with me one of those rare colored comic strips that showed Calvin’s mom preparing a salad for dinner. She first took an evil looking octopus out of the refrigerator. Then she squished it into a salad bowl with a mallet. Added weed-killer and other tasty looking chemicals. When Calvin gave her his signature grimace as she served him dinner, she exclaimed, “I spent an hour preparing this, you can at least try it.” I chuckled and said to my son, “You do know that all that preparation was in Calvin’s imagination, right? (In defense of all the moms that take a lot of time and energy preparing dinner for the family). To which, my brilliant boy retorted, “It is Bill Watterson’s imagination Mama!” I stand corrected!
It is pretty obvious that Manuel has an entirely different way of thinking. He once started singing “Staying Alive” and would turn his head every time he said “Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha…staying alive, staying alive!” as if he was looking at different points in the room. He told me that he was a blade of grass and every turn of his head he would see a grass-eating animal such as a cow, horse and goat! Hilarious!
I must confess that I can’t relate to all of my son’s reading material. For instance, I grew up reading Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. He can’t relate to these teen human detectives. It’s Astrosaurs, C.I.A. Cows In Action, The Bad Bears, Pokemon, Captain Underpants and the Warriors series. I guess today’s generation can relate more to characters that are not human…What makes me smile is whenever I see my boy reading. He goes through some 20 books a week – which makes me a regular parent forever checking out books at the library.
My family is a family of readers! I hope that reading is a big part of your family life too.