Saying Words with My Face

The other night, Sadie asked me to reread a new book - Silent Lotus - before I turned out the light. This book, one I picked at random from the Reading Rainbow website, is about a young girl in Kampuchea who cannot speak or hear. She loves to dance, so her parents bring her to the king and queen, where she is trained to be a court dancer. She learns to dance the classical Cambodian dances, and thus learns to communicate through dance. Sadie loves to dance, but I asked her anyway why she wanted me to reread this story. She said:

I'm like Silent Lotus. Sometimes I don' t know what to say when people do things I don't like, so I use my face to say my words.

Preschool is an amazing place - we ask kids everyday to work out their differences continually, "by using their words," but we don't stop to think - are there times when words just aren't enough? For Sadie, having to say why she feels hurt or sad or confused when a friend does something she doesn't like can't be the only solution. Kids live in a world far more expressive than ours as adults, and it seems sad, in this context, to force her to "use her words" when her face, or her dance, tell it better.

A couple questions to think about:

• Is it braver to stand and engage, or to walk away?


• Can we develop the patience to engage our daughters and each other in conversation when it begins with a look, rather than with a shout?

Why We Read

Seems obvious, right? But since we've started this new reading kick as a way to connect at the end of the day, I can't believe that I - the most compulsive reader I know (except, maybe, for my mother) - wasn't already doing this. Sure, we read every night, but it was getting to the point where I was hoping she would only pick 3 books (or fewer), short ones, so that I could curtail the long goodnight. But, now, picking out books to see what stories they bring up for us to talk about after, I'm amazed at the connections she's making and her willingness to talk about stuff she usually doesn't. Last night, we read a whole slew of books, including Appelemando's Dreams. It's a book about a boy whose dreams become pictures in the sky for his friends. They live in a town where everything is "drab" and the dreams - painted on the sky - get the boy and his friends in trouble. We finished the book - and Sadie jumped up out of bed, saying that Appelemando reminded her of someone, she ran to the bookshelf and grabbed Cherries and Cherry Pits. We read that, and then talked about color, and making stories, and about needing stories when your regular life is hard, or drab. Now my tendency would have been to push this further, immediately jump to what about her life is hard or drab, but I'm learning to let the opening just sit there, knowing that we are in for a longer conversation, one that will take years, and we don't have to have it all now.

Favorites on the Shelf

Here are the ones we return to regularly:

Chair for My Mother
Something Special For Me
Music, Music, For Everyone
Cherries and Cherry Pits
- Vera B. Williams

Her stories are wonderful stories about Rosa and her mother and her friends. In the first story, their apartment burns down and after they move, they save for a new chair so that Rosa's mother has somewhere to rest after a long day at work. In the second story, they save again and then go shopping for a birthday present for Rosa. In the last book, Rosa learns to play the accordian she bought for her present, and starts a band with her friends.

Cherries and Cherry Pits was one of my daughter's first real story book and we've been reading it forever. It's about a girl who draws the people in her neighborhood, as she imagines them, and the world she imagines for the empty lot next to her house.

Princess Knight
- Cornelia Funke

Cornelia Funke has a list of titles that look interesting, but this is the only one we've read thus far. Nice twist on a fairy tale theme - mother dies, king raises daughter, tries to marry her off, daughter tricks them all.

Zen Shorts
Zen Ties
The Three Questions
- Jon J. Muth

We just discovered these books a few months ago, while looking for something to give to the preschool as a birthday present. The first is a series of zen parables told by a panda to three children living next door. I knew we had found something great when, as we read them for the first time, and I came to the end of a sort of tricky parable (about a grumpy young monk and a wise older monk who helps a lady cross a puddle), I started to explain the meaning of the parable, and my daughter stopped me short to explain it herself. These three books truly prove the buddhist approach to learning with a "child mind."

Reading Stories

In my family, growing up, I was the one who read "brave girl stories" - that's what my father called the books I read - the ones about sailing alone around the world, escaping from Germany in WWII, and climbing the Himalayas.

Now my five-year old is ready for some brave girl stories of her own. Her world is getting more complicated as she gets ready for kindergarten in the fall, and we are both finding reading together to be a great way to get at some of the new challenges she is facing. We are working on a strong, confident girl campaign at home - and since bedtime is the coziest time of day for us, where we talk about hard stuff, I thought some books that can help us talk about growing up, friendship, and life might really help.

This blog will be about the stories we are reading as well as the stuff we are learning while we read. We've read lots of great books together over the past years, but we've started looking for new ones. I've been looking for books about brave girls, strong girls, and girl friendship. These don't have to be anti-Princess, but definitely pro-girl...