Our Reader-In-Chief

At eleven and six, President Barack Obama has been the only president my sons have consciously known. My oldest doesn't remember the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries first-hand, but from my retelling he’s adopted a personal memory of toddling along with me to vote for Obama at our DC voting station a field away from our neighborhood playground. I should probably tell him how he and I walked around the National Mall to the U.S. Capital days before crowds descended to witness with sheer jubilation Obama's inauguration. How thrilling it was to see the preparations unfold, how uplifted and joyful I felt. How optimism and hope sparkled in the cold sun. It’s a source of pride for my big boy to have lived in DC then and participated in that historic moment, just as it’s a source of pride for my little boy to have been born with Obama in the White House. To them, President Barack Obama is their president, and they’re sad to see him leave office. As am I. To remind them that Obama will always be their president, I've pulled a few biographies off our shelf.

Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope By Nikki Grimes. Illustrated by Bryan Collier (Simon & Schuster 2008)

Barack by Jonah Winter. Illustrated by AG Ford (Harper Collins 2008)

When we read about young Barack, I ask my sons if they, particularly my older one, can relate to his story. Like their president did as a child, they've lived abroad. Like their president's, their parents are from different countries. Like their president, they’ve had to adjust to new environments at a young age, to find their place in new schools, to straddle different realities. Like their president, my older one knows what it’s like to be an outsider, how painful it can be and how much pluck, courage, and determination it takes to move past challenging moments. They’ve both had early training in resilience building, like their president. I wonder how this awareness will shape their view of themselves and their sense of place in the world.  I also wonder if they will remain avid readers and have that too in common with President Obama, our Reader-in-Chief and Commander of Books.

In addition to rereading books about their president, we’ve been rereading one by him. Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters (Random House, 2010), gorgeously illustrated by Loren Long, is a loving, patriotic celebration of some of America's exceptional sons and daughters whose achievements reveal an inner quality -- creativity, intelligence, bravery -- that rests within the children for whom the book was written, Sasha and Malia, and every single child to whom the book is read.

Whenever we read a book, we occupy someone else’s expressive space. I tell my kids it’s kind of like we’re actually inside the author’s head, experiencing their creative imagination up close. When I read Of Thee I Sing to my sons, I’m keenly aware that my reading voice is blending with Obama’s storytelling voice. It’s a magical moment that connects my sons directly to their president. When I read the questions Obama’s narrative voice asks throughout the book, I’m aware that my reading voice joins a chorus of readers who ask children they love the same type of rhetorical question, one that often begins with “Have I told you…

… that you have your own song?

… that you are strong?

…that you are kind?"

Reflecting Obama’s prodigious intellect, the title Of Thee I Sing is an elegant expression of American history and its bold spirit. The line “Of Thee I Sing” is the third in the opening stanza of Samuel Francis Smith’s patriotic hymn “America.” Smith was a young Baptist seminarian at Andover Theological Seminary when he wrote the lyrics c. 1831. He was inspired to write a patriotic song while translating the German song, “God Save the King.” Smith’s lyrics were set to the same music as the German piece, which dates to the early eighteenth century, and which remains that of the British National Anthem. Known also as “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” and rather less inspiring as United Methodist Church Hymn 697, it was our country’s unofficial national anthem until the “Star Spangled Banner” was officially adopted in 1931. In this way, Obama’s Of Thee I Sing is set firmly in America’s European, Protestant past. It is also grounded in civil unrest.

In 1864, while the country was split and at war with itself, Smith sent his song upon request to J. Wiley Edmands, who had served as Massachusetts State Representative from 1853-1855. Reflecting the troubled spirit of the time in his letter to Edmands, Smith writes that he is “happy to have been the means through [his lyrics] of adding a momentary joy to a festive, or light to a gloomy hour.” It strikes me that Obama’s Of Thee I Sing has added joy to our lives and is right now a light during what for my sons and me is a gloomy hour.

 The last line of the opening stanza in Smith’s hymn can be related directly to our nation's struggle for civil rights. I want to make sure that when my sons listen to the words “Let freedom ring” they hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s resounding voice. Of Thee I Sing helps me to pass this to them when I read to them, "Have I told you that you don't give up?"

In Of Thee I Sing, Obama also offers a lesson in “how important it is to honor others’ sacrifices,” like Maya Lin did when she designed the Vietnam Memorial. The book urges my sons to be inspiring, like Cesar Chavez, and to boldly explore, like Neil Armstrong. In the question, “Have I told you that you are a healer?” we are asked to be mindful where we walk because we tread upon land claimed for us at a tragic cost of life.

If the least representational, the rendering of Sitting Bull as the land itself is perhaps the most evocative of Loren Long’s illustrations. It’s beautiful, and sad, and troubling because we don’t see a Native American as much as we see an idea of a historical figure. That alone speaks volumes about the erasure of our tragic past my sons aren’t yet ready to even begin to confront. Yet, Obama’s words strike a somber chord, too, and unite many strains to the brutal past of American history. On the two-page spread dedicated to Sitting Bull, Of Thee I Sing echoes the second stanza in UMC Hymn 697: “My native country, thee, land of the / noble free, thy name I love; I love thy / rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills; / my heart with rapture thrills, like that above.” I wonder if one day this spread will rest somewhere in my sons’ consciousness. I wonder if its imprint will inform their understanding of heritage? Will the natural landscape we claim as our national heritage be connected to stolen lands and loss of life?

Without exception, the two-page spread in Of Thee I Sing my sons linger over every time we read it together comes at the end.

The boys hover over the pages spread open on my lap. They study the children’s faces to identify the grown-ups they become. When they do this, my sons are experiencing the power of their president’s aspirational legacy. This is Obama’s enduring “Yes, we can” message penned just for them. What a gracious and generous gift.

The back story suggested on every page Of Thee I Sing I’m most curious to discover is the one that will reveal how Loren Long came to illustrate President Obama’s picture book. It’s poetic and fitting that the illustrator of Watty Piper’s beloved Little Engine That Could has given visual expression to Obama’s optimistic vision of America and its big-hearted folks.

Of Thee I Sing is full of grace and filled with hope. If we had the chance, we'd ask President Obama “Have we told you that you make us proud?”

Thank you, Mr. Obama, for serving with humility, guiding with hope, and leading with honor. You will always be my sons’ first president.

Guest post by a cherished friend and wonderful writer

Reading Charlotte’s Web: On Friendship, Beauty and Writing

By Maria Jerinic

When I was a child, I received an E.B White boxed set: Charlotte’s Web, Trumpet of the Swan, Stuart Little. Charlotte’s Web became, hands-down, my favorite (although I told everyone it was Trumpet of the Swan because somehow I thought I was bucking literary trends). I read Charlotte’s Web so many times that the binding cracked, pages came loose, hot chocolate stains spread across the cover.

Eventually I discovered the 1973 animated version. In those days before cable and VCRs, it ran on a local television, usually around Thanksgiving. My sisters and I never missed it.

And so, E.B. White and Wilbur and Charlotte became pillars of my childhood.

One recent Thanksgiving my children, who were about 10, 12 and 14 years old, came across the animated movie while flipping stations. We all stopped what we were doing, immediately absorbed by Wilbur’s panic, tempered by his protestations of love and devotion for Charlotte and Charlotte’s wise soothing counsel. During the commercial break, my kids pestered me with questions. Why would Charlotte not return to the farm? Why was Templeton so difficult? How did Wilbur come to be so special?

“It’s in the book,” I said. “Don’t you remember?”

Blank looks.

“Haven’t you read it?” I asked.

Apparently only my first child had read it, but he forgot everything. He also was the only one to have seen the full film because we used to have an old VCR and cassette copy; it had been that long ago.

How was this possible? This book that had meant so much to me – how had I not shared it with them? How had I allowed them to teeter into adolescence without absorbing it?

The shock only intensified. I went looking for my copy. I could not find the book! Was it possible that I didn’t have it in the house?  What had happened to my box set? I had packed up and hauled across country many books from my childhood, and I had added new copies of some. I counted two different versions of the Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings but no Charlotte’s Web.

I’m sure you’re not surprised that I immediately bought a new copy, the 60th Anniversary edition. Initially, my reading experience was infused with nostalgia. The Garth Williams’ illustrations were so familiar. So was White’s prose. There were complete sentences that jumped out at me, and I finished them in my mind before I read them. I remembered nodding over those lines as a child. I nodded again.

However, as I read on, something else took over. Something magical happened. I began to see just how wise and inspiring White’s novel is. I began to realize to what extent this novel had formed my adult self.

 Consider the moving celebration of friendship: “Wilbur didn’t want food, he wanted love. He wanted a friend – someone who would play with him.” Or this one: “No pig ever had truer friends, and he realized that friendship is one of the most satisfying things in the world.” And this one: “You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing…. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”

And of course, the novel’s final words: “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and good writer. Charlotte was both.”

As a child, I understood Charlotte’s Web is a novel about friendship. Charlotte and Wilbur – their bond saves his life. Their bond allows her to be remembered. However, reading it as an adult with three tweens of my own, I began to see that White offers us critical advice: friendships save our lives and make those lives meaningful. Writing helps too. Put those two things together, writing and friendship, and you have some powerful armor to protect you as you wage life’s battles.

As an adult, I have been preoccupied with friendship and of course, writing. When I count the blessings in my life – my many friends rank high. When I count the frustrations in my life, I fret over the demands of adult life, and how they seem to prevent me from nurturing these friendships. I find myself searching for books and films that explore friendship; I bemoan our culture’s preoccupation with romantic love at the expense of this seemingly less dramatic bond. I talk to my writing students about historical constructions of friendship. I write about my friends, and in doing so I realize that I believe our friends are our heroes.

I wonder, was E.B. White responsible for all of this?

Another reading surprise – White’s cataloging of the beauties of the world. His narrator gushes over the small details that promise to enhance our daily lives if only we too would pay attention: “Wilbur heard the trill of the tree toad and the occasional slamming of the kitchen door. All these sounds made him feel comfortable and happy, for he loved life and loved to be a part of the world on a summer evening.”

Of the friends’ home, the narrator muses, “The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell – as though nothing bad could ever happen again in the world.” Joy and peace to be found in the barnyard – consider how the prosaic becomes beautiful through its ability to comfort. Even the scent of manure soothes and the description of a pig’s slops assumes a poetic quality:

"It was a delicious meal – skim milk, wheat middlings, leftover pancakes, half a doughnut, the rind of a summer squash, two pieces of stale toast, a third of a gingersnap, a fish tail, one orange peel, several noodles from a noodle soup, the scum off a cup of cocoa, an ancient jelly roll, a strip of paper from the lining of the garbage pail, and a spoonful of raspberry jello."

This detailed list evokes smell, sight, even taste while triggering memories. That inclusion of squash and toast and raspberry jello suggests a party, a celebration, a time for play.

I’ve read enough of and on White to know that he was not some relentless Pollyanna, that he struggled with life’s terrors. Certainly Charlotte’s Web depicts crippling fear and heartbreaking loss, but the depictions are framed by glorious praise for the world that surrounds us.

This was not a point I remember from my childhood reading experience. However, now, after re-reading the novel as a sometimes grumpy, frequently tired middle-aged adult who resents living in the desert, I try to force myself each day to recognize one thing I might find beautiful in this climate. For example, there’s the Las Vegas March sun and breeze, infused by the scent of the flowering plants, a gift before our world becomes unbearably hot. The view down my street from a certain angle of snowcapped mountains framing the California Peppers, which bow down under their burden of rare desert greenery. And sometimes, I take this practice inside, to consider my life in uninspiring late twentieth century classrooms. Sometimes I can ignore the lack of windows, color, and let’s face it, character. Instead, I see the smile on my student’s face when she realizes she's had an insight about a novel and is willing to share it. I see the way my students open up to each other and in their writing, share intimate thoughts, insights that make them vulnerable and that they listen to their classmates’ words with sensitivity and grace.

These beauties in my life -- I have begun to chant a list of them out loud as I drive to work. I carry a journal around with me and sometimes write them down as I sit in the car waiting to pick up my daughter from school or my son from guitar lessons. I remind myself: despite the rigors of my daily schedule and some looming terrors, I can feel gladness.

This is what I hope Charlotte’s Web will give my children: a way to manage the sad struggles in the world -- through friendship, a focus on beauty and of course, writing.

Fewer worries. More let's just see.

“If we expose our kids to books and art, nothing but good can come from it.”

--Kevin Henkes

My approach to raising decent humans comfortable in their own skin and at home in the world comes down to a promise I made to my first child during the 22-week sonogram that announced “Boy!” As the youngest in a family of seven girls (let that sink in) not only did I not know the first thing about taking care of babies, I knew even less about raising boys. But rather than give into my tendency to squint far into the way too distant future and panic, I made a promise to follow his lead. That’s right, before he was born, I left a lot up to my son to see for himself. This may sound negligent, he was just a fetus after all, but making the conscious decision not to worry so much and over think every tiny detail about parenthood and motherhood and boyhood, and instead to follow my son wherever his needs and interests took him for as long as he wanted me around is one of the two best promises I’ve ever kept. The other is to read with him every day.

I have two sons now, eleven and six, and I’m pleased to report that reading with them and following their lead is working out great so far. I’ve loved beyond measure introducing them to literary companions from my childhood that my mother and I read about together. Endearing characters she and I adored like Ramona the pest, Ferdinand the bull, Amelia Bedilia, George and his friend the man with the yellow hat, are among my sons’ favorites, too. Keeping my promise to take my sons’ lead, I’ve spent precious hours with them in spectacularly beautiful places I’d never been to before with extraordinary characters I might never have met if not for them – stuttering, toothless dragons, brave and noble heroes from Hogwarts, and a young mouse named Wemberly.* She, along with all of Kevin Henkes’ wonderful characters -- Owen, Chrysanthemum, Billy Miller, Julius and his big sister Lilly with her purple plastic purse, to name a few -- are very present in our shared consciousness.

We were introduced to Henkes by my older son’s pre-K teacher, a woman I will forever remember as The Wise and Wonderful Mrs. H. (I worship teachers like her, by the way, and librarians.) At meet-the-teacher day, I asked Mrs. H (because privacy) for a good book recommendation about the first day of school, you know “to help my son transition into his new environment.” I’m pretty sure she saw straight through me when she suggested Henkes’ back-to-school favorite, Wemberly Worried.

In the story, Wemberly is about to start pre-K. The problem is, as the title suggests, Wemberly worries a lot about “Big things, little things, and things in between.” Starting school introduces a whole new set of questions and worries, all of which are perfectly understandable from a four-year-old’s perspective, questions about the teacher and wearing stripes, and questions about having to go to the bathroom and having to cry. While her mother, father and grandmother urge her repeatedly not to worry, she does anyway. I can relate. Really, I can’t think of a less effective way to stop worrying than being told “don’t worry.” My boys agree. And that’s the brilliance of Henkes. Not only does he perfectly capture the bigness of a child’s life and the courage children have to possess to get through it, I the grown up can relate to the situations and characters Henkes creates. ** Reading Wemberly Worried with my boys reminds me that what the boys and I enjoy about certain books and characters, what keeps them close to our hearts, isn’t always going to be the same. We might laugh at the same lines, and linger over many of the same pictures, but we’ll walk away holding onto different details. At the end of the story, Wemberly stops worrying once she sees for herself what school is all about. This reassuring message worked for my son then, and works to this day when they’re facing a new unknown. Sometimes all it takes to settle their nerves a little is to ask, “Remember Wemberly?” It’s what I’ve been telling myself as I get ready to publish this, my first, blog post.

In moments of parental worry, confusion, or distress, I’ll sometimes turn to the few selected experts sitting on my shelf and a certain guru mom (thinking of my calm and rational friend, Dr. K.). Sometimes I’ll go to super hero teachers and librarians for suggestions and recommendations. And for all the rest that comes up while raising two boys, I follow their lead and go to what we’ve read together.

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*Probably not necessary to add, but alluding to: the Ramona series, by Beverly Cleary; Ferdinand The Bull, by Munro Leaf; Amelia Bedilia books, by Peggy Parish; Curious George, created by H. A. Rey; the How to Train Your Dragon series (the 12 books, not the movie or TV series), by Cressida Cowell; and, of course, the Harry Potter series from our dearest of friends, (not really, but we call her that. See “About”) J.K. Rowling. Future posts will cover these favorites and more.

**In an NPR interview about Waiting, Kevin Henkes’ 2015 picture book about what is asked of children – patience – and what children often experience – loss – our friend (not really. See “About”) reveals how well he understands his audience: “Well, kids are tough, and kids are resilient. And kids - you know, sometimes, I think, as adults, we think of them as - because they're small in size, that they're small in all ways. And they're not. I mean, they have big feelings, and they, you know, have big eyes. And they see things. They hear things. They, you know - they're living their life just the way an adult does. And I think sometimes, as adults, we forget that.” And that right there is why we love reading Kevin Henkes together.

http://www.kevinhenkes.com/