Tesfa’s patience and memory have finally stretched out enough that we can read chapter books. So far, we’ve gotten through:
- The Twits by Roald Dahl,
- James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl,
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White,
- Matilda by Roald Dahl,
- Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O’Brien,
- and currently going through Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang by Mordechai Richler.
We’ve attempted, but not succeeded with:
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster,
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, and
- Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar,
with the lack of success likely due to pictures more infrequent than in the books with which we have succeeded (Tesfa colours next to me while I read with instructions that I inform her when a page has a picture on it).
After we finish Jacob Two-Two, I’m going to try The Secret World of Og by Pierre Burton because we’re Canadian there are pictures on every page so it may keep her attention better. I’m trying Ramona after that.
I look at the books I’m picking and I’m struck by one, very obvious, fact: these are the same books I read when I was a kid and while most are classics, some haven’t aged that well. The female rats of the Rats of Nimh aren’t encouraged to do anything other than raise families and don’t attend meetings about The Plan. In Matilda and Sideways Stories, people are really rude, calling each other stupid and idiot, etc. There’s a few spots of very mild racism in Roald Dahl books. The illustrations in Jacob Two Two are seventies-tastic with bell-bottoms and sideburns and maybe that book speaks less to Tesfa than it did to my mother who read it to us obsessively when we were Canadians in London, UK as Mordechai Richler was when he wrote it. Still, when the option is these books or the Berenstein Bears book we mistakenly let Tesfa choose at the Costco over the Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go where you have to find Goldbug on every single page which is awesome, I’m going to pick the classics.
But I’m still looking for newer chapter books and all I find are books clearly too old for Tesfa because of the requirement of pictures on at least every other page:
- The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making,
- The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place,
- Harry Potter (which I don’t actually even like that much – I know, scandalous – especially the later books that need massive editing and are clearly rushed),
- A Series of Unfortunate Events (which I haven’t read, but maybe it’s okay. I can take it out from the e-library and find out).
Chapters recommends something called Ivy and Bean to me. Is Encyclopedia Brown still around? That’s probably too old for her too. Otherwise Known as Sheila The Great? From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankenweiler? And I’m back to books I read when I was a kid.
Maybe I’m stuck with the Berenstein Bears for a while yet.