Words

Language is tricky. As a speech person and avid big mouth, I have years of talking experience and research behind me, but the wonder of the whole thing still leaves me, well, speechless at times. The encoding and decoding process of verbal and written communication is so complex, it’s a miracle we ever learn to do it at all, let alone with some proficiency (provided you think there is any proficiency--and looking at my students’ papers, sometimes I wonder…). It’s even more bizarre that babies can do it. In fact, they come here with the tools for language already in place and start dipping their pudgy toes in the convoluted communication waters before they can barely focus one eye at a time. Beyond the technical skills needed to produce language, there is a whole cognitive obstacle course to navigate--context, interpretation, cultural influences--before the magic of meaning happens. Which is another aspect of communication that kids do in their own small-person way. Years ago we were visiting friends with a four year-old daughter who mixed up her shoes in the on-putting process. When her father told her that her shoes were on the wrong feet, she looked up at him, so innocent and sincere, and said, “But, Daddy, these are the only feet I have.” And that prankster called language scored again. In Tedd Arnold’s Even More Parts, the poor little narrator gets worked over by simile, metaphor, and symbolism. Words are crazy. It’s enough to make you lose your mind.

http://www.amazon.com/Even-More-Parts-Tedd-Arnold/dp/0803729383

http://www.patriciamnewman.com/arnold.html

Seeing Things

Approaching a birthday this summer, and about to lose my vision coverage, I decided to go get my eyes checked just for the heck of it. I wasn’t having any problems seeing, but it seemed a waste to let any chance for healthcare slip away. So, I made an appointment and sat in the waiting area with all those poor people who aren’t blessed with great eyes like some of us. When I met the doctor, I confidently shook his hand, knowing that we wouldn’t be seeing anymore of each other after he checked my vision. After a couple of tests (which I breezed through with my super great eyes), I waited for the doctor to say he’s never seen such great vision in a forty-three year old and that I have the eyes of a teenager. But he didn’t say that. Or anything like it. What he said was, “Which frames would you like?” I was devastated. Glasses? Worse, reading glasses like some porch-rocking old lady? It’s not enough that gravity has had its way with me? I have to go blind as well? I exaggerate, of course, but I still desperately begged the doctor to tell me what I did to bring this fate upon myself and his response was, “Kept having birthdays.” Which is preferable to the alternative, but it still really stinks. In Tedd Arnold’s More Parts, one little guy goes to great lengths to protect what he’s got. I really need to start doing that.

http://www.amazon.com/More-Parts-Tedd-Arnold/dp/0803714173

http://www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00002322.shtml

Handle With Care

The first time I remember becoming aware that our bodies aren’t invincible is the moment my dad said “stitches” while holding his blood-stained white t-shirt to the busted open head of my beloved brother. I didn’t jump off my bike in lieu of using the brakes. I wasn’t physically injured. I wasn’t going to the E.R. as a patient. But when I realized that my unflappable father couldn’t handle this injury himself, and that my extremely tidy mother considered this enough of an emergency to grab a clean dishtowel to stem the bleeding, and that some doctor was going to sew up my brother’s five year-old head, I lost it. Hysterical screaming lost it. Taking all the attention away from the hurt child lost it. Can’t stop yourself even though you’re acting like a crazy person lost it. The sudden sure knowledge the bodies I loved could be gravely wounded made an impression still visceral today. I sat in the waiting room, randomly clutching a plastic mouse from the "Mousetrap" game like a talisman, waiting for news. It was not serious--just a few stitches with no residual effects other than a tiny scar--but the world changed for me in that moment of vulnerability. In Tedd Arnold’s Parts, the main character is a little boy who doesn’t understand baby teeth are supposed to fall out and belly button lint isn’t your stuffing leaking. All he knows is that if bodies don’t get tended to, bad things happen. Tell me about it.

http://www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00002322.shtml

http://www.amazon.com/Parts-Tedd-Arnold/dp/0803720408

Monster Mash

When I was little, the “Boogie Man” was represented by the cartoon devil from the Underwood Deviled Ham package. Don’t ask me how that happened. I had nightmares of him hovering over our house in a helicopter, lowering himself down by a rope to pluck me out of bed and take me away forever. The shapeless “monster” of finding myself separated from loved ones turned into an actual dancing devil monster. I’ve only had one child given to night terrors, but that was enough. She would enter that shady twilight between waking and sleeping and begin screaming about “mah-sters.” My son potty-trained himself at eighteen months, but went right back to diapers when his sister told him that the faint clinking sound in Nana’s bathroom vent was monsters. Even though most of my childhood fears have morphed into adult-sized monsters, I still can’t stand right next to a bed while getting in and it’s not just for the kids that a nightlight gets left on. Because we all have scary stuff to deal with, popular culture often works at helping us face our fears--or at least desensitizing us to them. Case in point: the runaway success of slasher films. For the preschool set, Sesame Street has fully reclaimed monsters, turning them harmless and endearing. And Tedd Arnold hijacked the familiar song about monkeys and jumping and beds for Five Ugly Monsters. The illustrations are great but the best part is getting to open up a can on the naughty monsters.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tedd_Arnold

http://www.amazon.com/Five-Ugly-Monsters-Tedd-Arnold/dp/0590222260