Some days, like those days when the girls are sick and seem to cling to me all day, whinging and eating at my patience, a test of endurance for which I am even less well-prepared because I was up with them several times the previous night; days like this nothing seems to distract them for long, it’s a challenge to get some food in to them at mealtimes and I am stuck for inspiration just when I need it most. Today was such a day, and there have been a few of them recently with the girls having snotty colds for most of the week. I slept in after a ragged night and then Steve looked after the girls while I saw a movie and shopped for groceries, but even so it was like having a massage then coming home to compete in the heptathlon.
One thing that is worth a try on days like this, and is always a calming influence in the bedtime routine at night, is reading stories. I love books and always have. Before having the girls I used to read about one novel or non-fiction book a week. In my summer holidays at school and uni, after foregoing the indulgence of a book during term time, I would be in heaven with a pile of books on one side of the bed which I would work through at the rate of two or three a week. My favourites were Russian authors like Dostoevsky, Bulgakov and Gogol, the English classics like the Brontes and Austen, and more modern writers from all over the world like Carey, Murakami, Hemingway and Woolf which have been complemented in recent years by writers like Halligan, Dessaix, Didion and Seth. I had a project to read all of the Booker prize-winning authors one year, then I got interested in autobiographies. These days I hardly have time to read any books and the most I get to is the weekend newspaper magazines, the Playgroup Association’s Totline about the value of play and the Australian Breastfeeding Association’s Essence. But I do enjoy reading children’s books with the girls every evening.
The girls and I enjoy the same children’s books and, supplemented by books from the library, we have enough books that I don’t get too sick of them (also they are mostly out of the girls’ reach and consequently I can choose which ones they can select from so I don’t have to read Totty’s Potty six hundred times). A well-chosen book is an excellent calming and distraction tool. It changes the subject, shifts the focus and as the girls have graduated from ‘touchy-feely’ and very simple baby books to those with a story, it is becoming more engaging for us too.
Educators talk of ‘pre-literacy’ skills such as sitting still, concentrating, holding a book the right way up, opening it and turning the pages, treating books respectfully and showing an interest and curiosity in them. It is only because I have seen the girls doing the opposite of all of these things that I can see that these are in fact the building blocks of reading. Reading to Rhea and Lara together also builds other skills, like compromise and patience because I can only read one book at a time so they have to share and wait for their choice to be read. There are many positives for the girls and me, and for strengthening their relationship with both their parents, through reading together at this age.
I am also conscious of the influence of books and the need to think about what we choose to read. I have noticed from the books we have – mostly they were presents or my old books, a few we have bought and many borrowed – that the majority have male protagonists. Most books about animals normalise the male as the point of reference. In fact I did a little experiment counting the percentage of male, female and neutral characters in our children’s books and it is 45%, 26% and 29% of our English books respectively. This is not too dissimilar to a large-scale study that found the rate to be 57%, 31% and 12% (Gender in Twentieth-Century Children’s Books 2011).
I don’t want the girls to feel that the world is a predominantly male one, nor that there are occupations and things that girls and women don’t do, so I will watch out for this in my book borrowing and buying, and will continue to change the sex of the protagonist when reading books aloud, especially for those Mr Men books I loved in my childhood like Mr Bump (‘Miss Bump’) that I read them last night (I know there are Little Miss books but I think their storylines are far more lame). I won’t be reading the girls traditional fairytales for this reason, and also because the scary picture of the world that they paint seems to be of an unnecessarily frightening place. And I’ll avoid books with characters linked to merchandising and books that talk about fast food that I’ve already seen in the library.
Instead I’ll seek out for the girls the books that I loved as a child like Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, Blinky Bill, The Faraway Tree and later on, Anne of Green Gables. I’ll look out for more gender-balanced modern books that have been written since then like those written by Australians Alison Lester (of which we have already been given two) and Mem Fox. And so many others we have yet to discover.
Books were one of my favourite experiences and memories of my childhood, and I hope they are for Lara and Rhea too. Like all good things worth experiencing in life, books are lifelong friends that nourish your soul.
National Literacy and Numeracy Week is being held this year from 27 August to 2 September 2012.
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