Everyone's a Critic

Lately, Ellie just devours books (I took a picture of Ellie chewing on one of her books to insert here which would have made this line hilarious, but the picture didn't turn out). She definitely has her favorites, distinct tastes in which books pass for story time and which don't. She seems to prefer the subtle sophistication of Goodnight Moon over the more crass Goodnight Gorilla, though lighter fare such as Boynton's Belly Button Book! or Sesame Street's Bubbles, Bubbles is certainly not beneath her notice (given her parents' occasional ventures into pop lit, who can blame her for a little guilty pleasure reading now and then?--we never did finish that book, for the record). I'm not sure how much any of these books are really developing her intellect, though. Her basic, formalist approach to most books is both obvious and lacking depth by privileging form over social context. I find her Marxist critique of Hippos Go Berserk a bit of a stretch, claiming that it is the nine proletariat hippos who "come to work" that incite all the hippos to "go berserk," thus leading to the eventual departure of said hippos and demise of the one, leaving him, in the end, alienated and "alone once more." However, I do think her postcolonial take on Curious George is spot on. (Sometimes I miss being in school. Just sometimes.)

Turns out, as wiggly as Ellie is most of the time, the one thing she will hold still for (other than eating ice cream) is a good book. She loves when we read to her. Ever since she was tiny, this has been a soothing activity for her. Sometimes we'll do a solid half hour of reading before she wriggles down to go do something else. She loves to point at and pat the pages, and she anticipates when the good parts are coming and starts smiling and laughing a page early and trying to turn the page to get to it. Sometimes the pages of her board books are stuck together because she gives slobbery "kisses" to her favorite pages.




The best is bedtime stories with Daddy, though. She is quite a daddy's girl lately, and loves when he reads to her, especially since he does better voices than I do most of the time. Sometimes Brady will read the same book three times in a row because he want to try a different accent each time. We've discovered that Sean Connery is the best voice for "Hickory, Dickory, Dock," and that there is no one quite so reassuring to Little Bo Peep that those sheep will come home than James Earl Jones. It's probably not the most conventional way to get a kid to bed, but at this point, we'll take what we can get.