After she read him the above from the 1953-54 Fantagraphics Peanuts collection, my son said to my wife, “Yes, that’s right, because people aren’t perfect. Only things are perfect.”
To which my wife replied, “Well, actually, things aren’t exactly perfect either. Nothing is really perfect.”
So my son thought about that for a second, and then he said indignantly, “Then why is there even a word ‘perfect’! There shouldn’t even be a word!”
Then he said, “I’m hungry!” and went to get a snack.
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Sorry Angel; insulting my son, even if quite possibly in jest, is not okay in the comments.
Smart boy!!
Your son is perfect! That’s what the word is for!
Usually I wince at parents’ examples of witticisms from their kids, but that “Then why is there even a word ‘perfect’! There shouldn’t even be a word!” is worthy of being in a “Peanuts” strip. (Now, which character would be likeliest to say that? I nominate Linus…)
…And the sudden change of subject with “I’m hungry!” sure comes across as perfectly – er, quintessentially – kid-like…
I just now ran across this “Kleefeld on Comics” blog entry, “Reading Comics Aloud”:
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A friend of mine has been reading a [i]Peanuts[/i] collection to his four-year-old in lieu of “traditional” bedtime stories. His daughter really seems to enjoy them, but he’s repeatedly struck with how to articulate what Shultz has drawn on the page precisely because of these types of situations.
[Examples of “Peanuts” strips where the visual tropes are hard to verbally convey are shown]
…Clearly, comic strips aren’t designed to be read aloud. The combination of words AND pictures to tell a story makes translation to words only often awkward and/or difficult. But I do like the idea of reading bedtime comics to kids, as it can inspire a lifetime of not only reading, but also an appreciation of the comic medium. With that in mind, are there any other suggestions for how to tackle the surprisingly difficult process of reading comics to your kids?
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http://kleefeldoncomics.blogspot.com/2009/08/reading-comics-aloud.html
Uh…you just show the kids the pictures? Perhaps I’m missing something…but it seems to work okay for me….
Right…but if they can’t read, it’s not always clear which words go with which pictures (or their eyes are moving at different speeds than your mouth/words, etc.). One can, of course, just point to the appropriate picture at the appropriate time. My own laziness makes me annoyed at having to do this, however. I also often feel compelled to say “Lucy says” and “Charlie Brown says”–Kind of annoying for me. My kids don’t seem to mind.
It’s not the same, at any rate, as reading a “straight illustration job” aloud. The words there tell the story–and the kid can look at the picture while they listen without the two needing to be coordinated in the same way. Kids books with multiple pictures per page have the same obstacles–but they are more pronounced with comics….
Now I just make my older one read the comics herself if she wants…
Nah, I never bother with the “Lucy says” or whatever. He figures it out easily enough from context…or if he’s confused he just asks….
I do different voices for the different characters.
That’d be way too much effort for me, I fear….
Now THAT’s a very interesting topic – how do you read comics “to” a non-reader? My 4-yr-old daughter really enjoys comics, not least b/c I do, but sometime I just don’t know how to read them to her: point at each panel? “then Supergirl says,…”, narrate the story w/out reading the dialogue? She can kind of walk herself through Tiny Titans, but otherwise I’m not sure she has panel-to-panel flow down. By far the most successful book for her is Ojingogo (not a manga) b/c it’s wordless, and has only a couple panels per page, plus it’s so surreal it hardly matters if you “follow” (btw it’s awesome, did I say?) Love to hear more “reading to the little one” ideas…