Editing Dr. Seuss
jaden violet thank you, thank you, thank you for your wondrous response!
I am not only a book weirdo. I am also a grandpa. I have two delightful granddaughters aged two and a half and five and a half (in that age bracket half-years are important). They live just 11 blocks away from me and once a week I walk over to their house for a play date. Every week on the way to their home I first stop off at the local library — which happens to be on the way.
Each week I check out two books from the library to read to the girls. We have a well established routine. I will play with them for 3 or 4 hours but before I do we first read books. There is no playing until the reading is finished. Being a book weirdo I feel it my duty as a grandpa to instill in the girls a love of books. Back when I was a full time stay-at-home mom I did the same thing with my own daughter. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work with my daughter so my granddaughters offer me a second chance to pass on to new generations a love for books. So far, it seems to be working.
The girls know and respect the routine and never argue about it. They are excited that I am there to play with them but they know that the reading always comes first. After hugs and high-pitched screaming, the girls run to the couch and sit down, leaving enough space for me to sit down between them.
I bring the library books with me over to the couch and sit down between them and commence reading aloud to them. I show them the covers of the two books and let them pick which one they want me to read to them first. Oddly, they are almost always in agreement which book they want me to start with. (Children’s book cover artists take note.)
My oldest granddaughter is quickly turning into a book weirdo just like me. She’s been in pre-school and already knows her alphabet and she can identify quite a few words. She blows me away, quite frankly.
A couple of weeks ago I came over and we all sat down on the couch to read when my oldest granddaughter ordered me to wait. “Before we read the library books I want to read a book to you!” she proclaimed with great enthusiasm.
She got up from the couch and went to her room. She returned with a copy of Dr. Seuss’s, Green Eggs and Ham. Back on the couch and snuggled up to me, she ordered me not to open the library books. She opened up the Dr. Seuss book and commenced to read it to me. To my utter befuddlement, she read the entire book and got every word right.
The younger granddaughter had taken one of the library books from my lap and looked through it while her older sister was reading. The older sister didn’t seem to care because her intent was to read the book to ME. She wanted to show me that she can read, too.
If you have ever read Green Eggs and Ham then you know that it is one of the most painfully redundant books ever written.The whole book could have taken up only three pages but Dr. Seuss kept repeating the same lines over and over and over and over. It can make you want to scream.
But I kept any editorial comments to myself. I was too amazed. I watched my granddaughter place her tiny little finger under each word as she read it. How did she suddenly know all those words? She read with such profound intensity, oblivious to all else. She even read with nuance, emphasizing certain words and pausing between sentences. She turned the pages with precision and pointed out the illustrations to me to make sure I understood. I was seriously blown away.
When she came to the last page of text I was relieved by the end of Dr. Seuss’s repetitiveness but I also didn’t want to stop watching her read. And then she turned the page…..
The story and the text was over but there was one more page of illustration. As my granddaughter turned the page I saw that she had written on that last page! She had written in the book! She had written, “The end.”
Looking at that, I then looked at her and asked, “You wrote that?
“Yeah. The writer forgot to write, ‘the end,’ so I wrote it in.”
I was blown away by her sudden reading ability but this sent me to an even higher degree of being blown away. I also suddenly realized that it may have been partly my fault. After finishing the many, many library books that I have read to her over the last few years I always say, upon closing the book, “The end.” Almost no children’s book author ends their books with, “The end,” but, for some reason, I always said that upon finishing a book even though it was not in the text. I’m not sure why I did this. Perhaps it was some way of proclaiming, “Yippee! We just read a book!” It was a way of bringing closure to our shared experience that brought a smile to my granddaughter’s face.
So somehow my darling granddaughter came to expect all books to end with, “The end.” So when Dr. Seuss, in his orgy of redundancy, failed to include that closure she decided to add it in herself. I was thoroughly amazed that she was able to read the entire book accurately but I was also beyond amazed that she knew how to write and correctly spell, “The end.”
Yes, I’m a weirdo when it comes to writing in books but I certainly said nothing about that when I saw that my granddaughter had written in her Dr. Seuss book. Instead, I was happy and proud.
My granddaughter is an editor!
After her amazing performance, my reading of the two library books was seriously anti-climatic. I was upstaged by a five and a half year old. I’ve never been so proud.
