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I have been reading the Neil Gaiman book, Odd and the Frost Giants to the Little Man for the past week or so. I seem to be able to nudge him into letting me get through about a chapter in a sitting. It's tough for a three year old to sit for the story that long, without the pictures for him to follow along with. There are some pictures, quite stunning art work, interspersed throughout the book. But it's just not quite enough to hold his interest. Or rather, there aren't enough of them, and so I'll get about a page or so later in the book, and he'll reach up and flip back the page on me so he can see the picture.
Now, I have no delusion that he's going to grasp all the subtle clues in the book as to who some of the characters might actual be, before the reveals happen. In fact, even though we learn names for them, and he remembers that they have names, he has a hard time remembering the animals' names. And yet, he does get some of the story. I remember when I flipped one page early in the book, to a picture of Odd and his family, Little Man identified all the characters in the picture without prompting. (A bit more impressive when you realize that by the time you get to the picture, you've gone past that scene in the story, and, he is only three.) Overall, the story probably is too old for him. Perhaps not by not all that much. No question that he's still at an age where picture books are integral to his enjoyment, but with this experimentation, I can tell that he's ready to handle much longer stretches of text than many of the books on his shelf now. I'll have to figure out what kinds of books next to acquire to keep him interested, though, it seems for the moment that it won't be too hard to do.
What is quite gratifying these days is that when he wakes up in the morning, instead of running out of the room to come get me or my wife, he grabs a book or two off the shelf and starts reading to himself. I'm certain there are some words he actually does grasp as words. But mostly, I think he does one of two things. Memorize the stories, and just use the pictures as kind of mental reference points along the way. Or, sometimes he just makes up stories to go with the pictures. This seems to be happening more frequently with the French books, as those don't get read to him as often as the English ones. (What can I say, my French is pitiful, and after a long day, it's hard to force myself to struggle with a foreign language that I'm simply not proficient in, never mind fluent.)
The Young One, on the other hand, is still at the stage where his entire goal regarding books is as a teething device, which limits which books I put within his reach. A feat recently complicated by the fact that he can now perform a steady army crawl to get where he wants to go. A marked improvement over having to roll wherever he was hoping to go, since he has much better aim now. He does enjoy sitting and listening when I read too, but his attention span is negligible, as one would expect for his age. I wonder just how long before I'll be able to witness the Little Man reading to the Young One as my older brother Steve used to do for me as a child. That should be some interesting eavesdropping to be sure.
Now, I have no delusion that he's going to grasp all the subtle clues in the book as to who some of the characters might actual be, before the reveals happen. In fact, even though we learn names for them, and he remembers that they have names, he has a hard time remembering the animals' names. And yet, he does get some of the story. I remember when I flipped one page early in the book, to a picture of Odd and his family, Little Man identified all the characters in the picture without prompting. (A bit more impressive when you realize that by the time you get to the picture, you've gone past that scene in the story, and, he is only three.) Overall, the story probably is too old for him. Perhaps not by not all that much. No question that he's still at an age where picture books are integral to his enjoyment, but with this experimentation, I can tell that he's ready to handle much longer stretches of text than many of the books on his shelf now. I'll have to figure out what kinds of books next to acquire to keep him interested, though, it seems for the moment that it won't be too hard to do.
What is quite gratifying these days is that when he wakes up in the morning, instead of running out of the room to come get me or my wife, he grabs a book or two off the shelf and starts reading to himself. I'm certain there are some words he actually does grasp as words. But mostly, I think he does one of two things. Memorize the stories, and just use the pictures as kind of mental reference points along the way. Or, sometimes he just makes up stories to go with the pictures. This seems to be happening more frequently with the French books, as those don't get read to him as often as the English ones. (What can I say, my French is pitiful, and after a long day, it's hard to force myself to struggle with a foreign language that I'm simply not proficient in, never mind fluent.)
The Young One, on the other hand, is still at the stage where his entire goal regarding books is as a teething device, which limits which books I put within his reach. A feat recently complicated by the fact that he can now perform a steady army crawl to get where he wants to go. A marked improvement over having to roll wherever he was hoping to go, since he has much better aim now. He does enjoy sitting and listening when I read too, but his attention span is negligible, as one would expect for his age. I wonder just how long before I'll be able to witness the Little Man reading to the Young One as my older brother Steve used to do for me as a child. That should be some interesting eavesdropping to be sure.
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