My 7 year old Korean niece is creative, a trait she inherited from her mother. Her drawings are full of detail, and are beginning to show active observation of the world around her. Most kids are busy drawing "symbols" of the world around them. (ex: the lolly-pop shaped things every child knows is a tree) My niece is beginning to observe reality, and incorporate details from it into her drawings. For example, she drew me as a princess surrounded by a cloud of diamonds, and she got my hair-do right. I don't have much contact with her, because they live, quite literally, on the other side of the world. However, I do whatever I can to fan that spark of creativity.
I've sent her art supplies, but have been waiting until Christmas to send her some inspiration. Various of my siblings pooled our money, and bought her the same books that inspired and enthralled us as children. Some are still in print, but a fair amount of them are not, which makes finding good copies an "adventure." We picked some books illustrated by Trina Schart Hymen, The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, and of course, some Dr. Suess.
Now here's the problem with our little scheme: my niece can't read english.
She can understand spoken english pretty well, though. So, I decided to record family members reading the books aloud to her.
I knew it would be a good gift to give, and one full of familial tradition.
For me, opening these books feels like coming home, the same way Southern Ohio hills are what looks like home, or the way bread rising smells like home, to me.
I was read to a lot as a child, and it was a wonderful, warm experience. My father read to us a great deal. By the time I came along, many of my siblings had learned to imitate my father, and read aloud to the children younger than them. My sister Mary was particularly enthusiastic about this. There were probably hundreds of nights where she read to us while we worked on the dishes. We loved being read to, but hated doing dishes. We liked to stop mid-dish and just listen. I can still hear her saying "I won't keep reading unless you keep working."
I made sure that my father was one of the ones who I recorded.
He read "The Sleep Book" by Dr. Suess.
It's a book I can remember being read to me by his father. Apparently my grandfather read to my father when he was a little boy, and so my father learned to bond with us by reading to us frequently. We would perch on whichever of his limbs were most available. Little kids got precedence over big kids, especially if it was a picture book. The best spot, if he was lying on his stomach on the floor, was straddling his back, and peering over his shoulder at the book.
