Ann Likes Red! Red! Red! Red!

When I was learning to read, my mom had a rule: if you get frustrated and behave badly, you aren’t in the mood to learn and you are finished trying for the night. As high-strung then as I am now, I endeavored mightily to stay calm (I must have counted to sixty on the flowered couch a million times), but I was rarely successful and would lose both my cool and my reading opportunity. It makes me mad almost forty years later. It never seemed like my brother had a hard time controlling his temper. Why was it always so hard for me? Scarlett has some self-control challenges, too. She likes to have several binkies at all times, but when she gets ticked, she hucks them in toddler angst. Before they leave her hand, she already regrets the impulsive decision to throw them and is begging for them back. Like most toddler anger shows, it’s pretty funny, but I can’t help thinking of my failed attempts at self-mastery when I see her struggle with the consequences of rash choices. There might be hope for her because Dorothy Z. Seymour’s Ann Likes Red, about a little girl with very strong opinions, seemed to be the literature that calmed the savage beast in me. It was the first book I ever read independently and I’ve been saving it to read to Scarlett. Somehow, reading a book about a girl who loves red to a toddler named Scarlett on Valentine’s Day seemed fitting.



www.rwrinnovations.com/.../ann_likes_red.htm
http://www.purplehousepress.com/dorothy.htm