Nothing more than feelings

Edith is becoming a sensitive little soul.

A few weeks ago, she started pointing out when characters in books looked happy, sad, or frightened to her.

Whenever a character in a book was being mean to an animal--as when Max chases his dog with a fork in Where the Wild Things Are--she would pat the animal and say soothingly, "Nice, nice dog."

A few days ago I introduced her to a little book that was mine as a child, Love is a Special Way of Feeling. It features sweet black-and-white line drawings of round-faced, mouthless children playing outdoors, while the text explains in a simple, lyrical way what love is. When we got to the page that explains that love sometimes begins when one person understands, without saying anything, how another person feels, Edith wanted me to stop. The accompanying picture is of a playground. A tight group of children stands around talking, while a boy sits alone on a log. A girl standing just outside the group, whether because she has taken a step back or because she has never quite fit into the group in the first place, looks toward the boy. I explained that the boy was lonely, then suggested that the girl probably was going to befriend him. Edith wanted to spend about ten minutes pointing out, "Boy lonely. Mommy, lonely." It bothered her.

When we finally got to the last page of the book I read, "Love is a happy feeling that stays inside your heart for the rest of your life," and Edith said, "Amen." She was right--it was the kind of text that sounded like a prayer, both in style and content.

Last night we read Curious George, and when we got to the page where Curious George is sitting in jail, Edith patted him and said, "George lonely. Edith be friends George."

Tonight we read The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash. We haven't read it since Edith was a baby, but I picked it because it's funny and has comical, detailed drawings. I hadn't counted on there being three tricky things about it at her age: (1) It is all dialogue, with very little text articulating what is happening in the pictures, (2) it all happens in flashback, as a girl tells her mother about her class field trip to a farm, (3) the story she tells unfolds backwards, as her mother pulls out of her bit by bit what happened on the trip.

Still, none of this seemed to be causing Edith too much evident frustration. Then I turned to the page on which the boa constrictor is in the henhouse, and all the hens are flying around squawking. One of the hens is caught in a loop halfway down the goofy boa's kinking body. Edith began to breathe quickly and pointing to that hen, said with rising panic, "Chicken caught!" Her lip trembled, and she was on the verge of frightened tears. I had never seen her get scared by a book before. I quickly turned back to the page that shows the boa smiling at all the farm animals trying to make friends. Then I turned to the page after the henhouse page and showed what she needed to see--that all the hens were flying free. "Chicken free," she said. Then, pointing to the boa, who now was over on the far side of the page slinking into the farmer's laundry, "Snake go home!"

I read her several more books after that just to make sure she didn't go to sleep on the memory of the boa in the henhouse. Soothing books about bunnies and ducks by Margaret Wise Brown and Garth Williams. In one, a bunny comes across an egg and can tell something is moving inside but doesn't know what it is. As the bunny speculates over the course of several pages, I realized Edith probably didn't know what comes out of an egg either.

"Edith, what do you think is in there?" I asked.
"In there," she repeated.
"Yes, what's in the egg?"
She was silent.
"There's an animal in there. Do you know what kind of animal it is?"
Edith looked like this was news. "Animal in there," she repeated.
"Yes. What kind do you think it is? Do you know?"
"Lion. Rooooarrrrr."
When the duck was born a few pages later she looked a bit disappointed. "Duck in egg?" she confirmed. "Lion in there, too?"
She didn't seem to take it too hard. Leaning back in the rocking chair when we'd done reading, she told me approvingly, "Good book, Mommy."

And then it was time for Peter and the Wolf.