Alan Kercinik has been a Chicagoan his whole life and a dad since 2009. He finds it easy to relate to his two boys, since he still likes most things from his childhood. All opinions here are his own, to the relief of his wife, employer, family and majority of his friends.
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Not that long ago, I read Jack his first book. He’s eight weeks old. So while we’re certain that he is a super genius in the making, I know I did it more for me than him. But I’m kind of hoping it becomes our thing.
Most people, they assume it will be our thing. If there is one thing Jack got a lot of from our friends and family — aside from those blankets with the animal heads on them that, I must admit, confuse me because they remind me of tiny little pelts — it’s books. I pulled one off the shelf. We sat in the chair. I began.
Three minutes later, I’m in our bedroom. Jack is in the “monkey hold”, where he kind of hangs off my arm, leaving the other free to, in this case, gesture wildly while I’m talking to my wife.
“How was the story?”
“Uuuugh. There was no story.”
“I heard you reading to him.”
I’d picked this picture book that had these really simple 3-D graphics in them. Every two pages described some vehicle or another, and then, if you moved the page on the right, the mode of transport being described would move a little. Clouds of steam would pop up above a train. A sail boat would bob on the water.
To make up for the complete lack of plot, the writing was sprinkled with the most vile of writerly tricks, the superfluous exclamation point. If it’s not exciting, jamming overstated punctuation at the end of every sentence isn’t going to make it so.
“There was no story. It was all … special effects and hype.”
The irony, of course, is that I have taken my wife to nearly every superhero movie that has come out in the past seven years. I could see her memory, of getting dragged to Spider-Man 2 the night before opening day, of sitting through three hours of Watchmen the week before she gave birth, playing at the corners of her mouth.
“It’s a kids’ book. Do you hate kids’ books? What are you going to do when there’s some kid movie that comes out he wants to see? Boo at the screen?”
“I have no problem with kids’ anything. It’s bad kids’ stuff I don’t like.”
Jack was draped over my arm still, lolling his head around, looking down at the floor, the dog, the lamp on the nightstand, his Mom.
She stroked his hair. “I don’t think he knows the difference yet.”
“Yeah, but I do.” I took hold of him under the armpits, turned him toward me. “No crap for us, right buddy?”
He smiled, a big toothless grin. I convinced myself it wasn’t gas.
“See,” I said. “He’s with me!”
2 comments
matt says:
June 3, 2009 at 1:50 am (UTC -5 )
Seriously. William has some really great books, but many are total crap. I will say this, the older he gets, the more he shows interest in the quality books. I’d like to think he’s actually making that choice for a higher quality childrens book, and honestly I just hope it means he won’t be into Barney.
matt says:
June 2, 2009 at 8:50 pm (UTC -5 )
Seriously. William has some really great books, but many are total crap. I will say this, the older he gets, the more he shows interest in the quality books. I’d like to think he’s actually making that choice for a higher quality childrens book, and honestly I just hope it means he won’t be into Barney.