A Special Wednesday

This week I had the opportunity to read to my son’s First Grade class.  This is exciting to me for a number of reasons, one of them being how much I love books (another being that in First Grade, as opposed to Kindergarten, parents at my son’s school aren’t allowed to be as ever-present.  So any chance to be in the classroom and see what’s going on in there is a cause for celebration in my book.).

But I really love reading to the kids.  The last time I had the chance to read to them, I’d gone for laughs.  My son had come home talking about how hilarious the book was that another parent had read, so being a bit competitive, I felt like I’d try to go the same route (and, hopefully, deliver similar results).  It had been fine, and fun, but this time I decided to go a different route.

My son mentioned the possibility of reading a new book we had bought about Frida Kahlo.  I loved that idea and realized we had a second book from the same series about Maya Angelou.  When I discovered that it happened to be Maya Angelou’s 90th birthday that day, it felt like something of a sign from the book gods.  So I went in with those two books, each from my favorite genre– biography, and about rad women.

Neither book is funny, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from the First Graders.  But they were so lovely, so into these stories.  They loved that the stories were about real people (and real people who overcome great difficulty to make great art and become well-known).  Their teacher had done a great job of showing the kids the similarities between themselves and Maya Angelou, who, she pointed out, was a writer like them (as they are writing their own books and poetry in class this year).

They sat in rapt attention and asked great questions after each book.  The whole experiende made me swoon inside. Watching the kids loving books and getting to share the experience of loving these books with them felt so special.

It was just another Wednesday.  But it was a special one for me.

By the way, the books I read are from an awesome series called Little People, Big Dreams, and each book I’ve read from series has been wonderful.