The girl who is now my middle daughter was the youngest for ten years. She is scrappy, wild and beautiful, deciding early on that this baby wasn’t going to be passed over, left behind or kept down. Where her older sister was patient and deliberate and 
her older brother was too active to stop very often and tear things up, Addison was a one-girl destruction derby laying waste to everything she touched--especially books, with their fragile paper pages and soft cardboard covers. Most books, indeed most things of all varieties, had to be put well out of reach and only handled under supervision if we ever wanted to see them again. So, Addie got her own sturdy reading material at ground level and a few lonely volumes have survived to tell the tale of being thrashed, bashed and scribbled upon. Her favorite was Barbara Emberley’s Drummer Hoff, where old-fashioned military folk, with rhyming names and duties, prepare to fire off a cannon. Every page is battered and ink-stained, attesting to its constant presence in the diaper bag and whatever purse Addie adopted that week. The outside edge has childish scrawl that says, 
“Addison. Kiys. Connor. Kalon lotion eans smaf.” Whatever that means. I feared that bringing home a new baby would be disastrous for all parties, but “Baby A” and “Baby B,” as Addie now calls herself and Scarlett, have always been comfortable with who they are to each other and themselves. And they both love the giant “KAHBAHBLOOM!” finale.http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Barbara-Emberley/706365
http://www.amazon.com/Drummer-Hoff-Barbara-Emberley/dp/0671662481
No comments:
Post a Comment