What It's All About

My grandsons, 10 and 8, came to visit yesterday.  They had hoped to spend the Sunday afternoon on their dad's boat on the lake...but it was raining and so we stayed in, played board games, and watched the Red Sox get trounced in Philadelphia.

This is their last week of the school year, and the older boy, finishing fifth grade, told me that his class had just finished reading my book "Gossamer."

He and I were standing in the kitchen when he told me this. Then he said, "You know what? Remember the scene where the boy, John, describes a kid he knew (yeah, right, said my grandson, nudging me and winking) whose dad made him eat dogfood?"

Yes, I told him, I remembered the scene where the abused child reveals what his past has been like.

"Well," my grandson said, "In my head, while the teacher read, I pictured this kitchen!" He looked around. "I could see the dogfood bowl there, by the refrigerator."

We both looked to the spot he was pointing to, and I think we were both recalling the little boy whose father had forced him to crouch on the floor and eat canned dogfood from a bowl.

"And you know what? I'm the only kid in my class who has seen this kitchen. So every other kid was picturing a different kitchen!"

Years ago, in a book called "Rabble Starkey," I described the moment when a girl, being read to from Steinbeck's "The Red Pony," realizes that she can see the dog named Smasher in her mind, using the bits of description the author has given....but that the others, listening, were creating their own mental pictures of dogs, using the same clues. "We each had our own private Smasher," she says.

My grandson and I talked briefly about how TV doesn't let you do that.  I didn't think to tell Grey about the private Smasher.  But maybe I'll find a copy of that old book and give it to him.

At the moment, though, he is very absorbed in Percy Jackson and The Olympians.

Comments

[Krista]

Great picture! I used to have that same conversation with my students. I think I'll revisit that topic when my fifth grade graduate gets home from Beach Bums camp.

[ojimenez]

There is a poster in my daughter's wall that gives me chills when I walk into her room. It's the face of an actor who plays...(let me go to her room and get the name)...ok, "Edward" He's the main character on the movie Twilight. (My daughter has not seen the movie. She read the book when visiting her older cousins)

She spotted the Twilight posters in the bargain bin at a bookstore, selling for a buck, so she had to have one. When we got home she ripped the plastic and unrolled the poster. The look on her face when she saw the picture resembled the look she gets when she sees green beans on her dinner plate!

Yuck! she said. "I thought he was a lot more handsome in the book." There are no pictures of the characters in any of the book series!

P.s. like your new profile photo.

[Jes]

I just got my copy of Gossamer back, actually, after loaning it to a colleague to read to her daughter. They loved it so much they could hardly part with it; I love it too much to give up my copy! I do think it's very interesting how he had a real place to link to his imagination, and the observation that others don't have that same image is interesting also. I wonder who he thinks has the upperhand?