Tag Archives: Valentine’s Day

February 16, 2010 · 3:43 pm

What I Owe to Books

I didn’t post yesterday because I was busy helping my son make a box for his Huckleberry Finn party at school today. I also made gingerbread for his whole class, because that is a food item mentioned in the book, Huckleberry Finn.* The box is actually a Valentine’s Day box, but his class skipped the official Valentine party, opting to combine it with their Huckleberry Finn experience. The boxes were to have themes, one of which was HF, but my son chose “Outer Space.” More specifically, “Zero Gravity in Outer Space,” and we were trying to get the box to levitate via magnets  and fishing line to simulate said zero gravity. In a nutshell, it was a pain in the neck and didn’t end up working.

However, the valentines themselves, which we also made, looked great. Each was a heart made out of card stock, with a little folded corner-bookmark stuck on the end, which I created from (slightly modified) directions in an origami book. As we worked together, I started thinking about all of the things that I’ve learned to do from books.

I don’t just mean textbooks, I mean regular novels and stories. For example, I can’t recall the title, but when I was little I read a book about a boy who made a flute out of a willow branch, and the story described how to do it. (You select a half inch or so thick branch, flexible but not too flexible, not brown but not green, cut it to about 6 inches long with a jack knife, pull out the core, cut a v-shape about an inch from the top, and drill a series of little holes down the front. Voila! You have a willow flute.)

Other things that I have learned from books include how to ride a horse, how to do calligraphy, how to carve soap, several magic tricks, how to knit and crochet, many card games, how to speak Spanish, Hardanger embroidery, how to make a sand candle and do plaster sand casting, how to take care of parakeets, how to rip a telephone book in half, two ways to do invisible writing and how to make it un-invisible, the safest way to climb a pine tree, how to bake a potato in the ground, how to tie knots, morse code, and how to “speak” the sign language alphabet. As well as all of the recipes I’ve made and music that I’ve played.

What are some things that you owe to books?

*Ten is rather young, in my opinion, to be reading Huckleberry Finn: Read my post: “Asynchronous Development in Book Selection”

4 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , ,

February 12, 2010 · 2:28 pm

The Valentime

The boy labored over the card, a red ballpoint in his hand. He drew a heart-shaped dartboard with an E in the center, a scoreboard with Love written at the top and the name Emma fifteen times. Giant red darts that looked like rockets filled the corners of the paper. His tongue peeked out at the corner of his mouth as he wrote, “I shuw hopen you like this card. Love, Jake.” He folded it in half and added it to the glittery wooden heart he had persuaded his mother to purchase at the craft store.

“Mommy, when aw you goween to make an envelope fow Emma’s valentime?” His auditory processing problem was evident when he spoke; the garbled sounds of the words he heard were converted to speech. After five years of therapy, he was understandable, but still sounded less mature than his seven years.

His mother was over at the kitchen sink, washing up the pots and pans from dinner.

“Why don’t you write the names on your other valentines, and I’ll do it when I’m done?”

With a slight scowl, he freed the box of valentines from its cellophane wrapper and got the list of names out of his backpack.

“Have you even seen Emma lately?” his mother asked. Emma had moved up to the gifted program at the start of the school year, along with Jake’s best friend, Niles. Jake had been passed over because his disability interfered with the testing and his scores were low.

“Well, I saw hew at wecess.”

“Did she say hi?”

“No. But I did see hew in da dwivah line, and she waved at me.”

A moment passed.

“Does Emma love you, too?” The real question.

“I don’t think so, but if I give hew enough pwesents, she will,” he said with confidence.

That made his mother smile, but she cautioned, “Well, maybe. There are lots of other little girls, you know.”

“I know dat,” Jake said, “but I love Emma.”

His mother dried her hands on a towel and walked over. Picking up the pink sheet of acetate Jake had chosen, she quickly fashioned an envelope large enough to accommodate the card and sparkling heart. She was an artist, and knew how to make all kinds of things. Jake watched her swift movements with admiration.

“There,” she said, slipping the gifts inside and sealing it. She handed it to him. “You can write her name on the front. E-M-M-A.”

“I know dat,” Jake protested. He always knew more than she thought he did. He wrote the name and carefully put the envelope into his backpack.

Emma would like it — he knew that, too.

2 Comments

Filed under Miscellaneous, Reading, Uncategorized

Tagged as ,

February 9, 2010 · 2:54 pm

Six Words, Much Quoted, New Twist

It seems lately that everyone is quoting Ernest Hemingway’s shortest short story, “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” Last week, I was listening to NPR while driving, and heard an interview with editor Larry Smith from the online magazine Smith. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/
reports/misc/sixwordlife_20080205.shtml)
He has capitalized on Hemingway’s idea by inviting people to post their own “Six Word Memoirs” and compiling them into a book called, “Not Quite What I Was Planning.” At the end of the interview, callers to the show shared some of their own ideas, and several were very clever.

As I drove along, I tried to think of a few of my own and realized that for some reason, all of mine rhymed. Since February fourteenth is fast approaching, it occurred to me that I could incorporate the discipline of limiting oneself to six words into writing a Valentine’s Day poem for my husband.

It didn’t take long: “Married you, had two, love true.”

That was fun, so I thought of a few more that could hypothetically be appropriate for the season: “Like fate, first date, was great.” “Cute guy, oh my, feeling shy.”

Tiring of that, I started to think of a few less appropriate ones: “First date, arrived late, not great.” “Pretty girl, marriage whirl, baby Pearl.”

Which quickly degenerated to: “Divorced date, much freight, some hate.” “Big date, why wait, let’s mate.”

And then one inspired by my having to brake fast: “Fat squirrel, tail curl, brown fur-l.” (No, I didn’t hit him.)

But enough of mine. I would love to see other people’s ideas for six word rhyming Valentine’s Day poems. If you think of one and would like to share, please post it in the comments section.

I’m done, had fun, gotta run. 🙂

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , ,