The rainbow of her life February 5, 2009

It’s been more than a year now since she fell in love with rainbows. I don’t remember how it all started – maybe it was because she was so much in love with colors, or maybe she fell in love with the book “Elephant Dance” where Ravi’s grandpa describes the colors of the rainbow to him.
For the past year, her love for the rainbow has manifested itself in many different ways – from paintings with lone rainbows to pictures of rainbow butterflies, flowers, trees, girls and so on; from making of rainbow bead bracelets to rainbow pattern on pretty much everything she colors or makes or buys at the store. She even bought a dress and an umbrella with a rainbow pattern on them for her birthday this year. Even her birthday cake had a rainbow pattern on it. Pretty much her signature has been a rainbow, for the past year.
But guess what, she had never seen a real rainbow until today. She envied everyone who had seen one and she longed very much to see one. What we say today from our car was the most beautiful rainbow. I’ve never been so excited to see a rainbow though I’ve seen many including the most beautiful one in Hawaii. But today was special, she was seeing it for the first time after longing to see it for so long. She was extremely thrilled when she saw it. I asked her what she thought of it and she said, “it is very beautiful but I thought it would be brighter”. Maybe she thought it would be as bright as rainbows in her pictures – oh, I love the way they think!!

The importance of researching books for your child February 5, 2009

“When Ramma Mabbit started teachin’
Runny how to eat,
He ficked his pood up with his ears
He wasn’t very neat…”
You may be wondering which language this book is written in. It’s an excerpt from Shel Silverstein’s Runny Babbit, I’ve found Silverstein’s books to be not only entertaining but also very educative for my daughter. Everyone knows how books open doors for children. But what I would like to remind you today is that choosing the right books at the appropriate time in their lives can make an even bigger difference.
Take this book Runny Babbit. I fell in love with it as soon as I picked it up from the shelves in my daughter’s school library. I got it home and read a few pages that night to my four and a half year old daughter. She immediately dived deep into the word play presented in this book. I read aloud each sentence to her the silly way and she started setting the sentence right. It took her a little while to find the correct form for the words in some of the sentences, but I could see that she was thoroughly enjoying the process. What could be better than a child enjoying and learning at the same time? I now often see her reading this book aloud on her own
But I wish every book that I bought or borrowed were as big a hit as Runny Babbit was. It has taken considerable effort on my part to research different authors and get the right books for her. Amazon.com and public libraries are often great resources for research. I also discuss books and authors with my friends who are moms. And sometimes, you just don’t know, you have to read the book to the children and find out whether they like it or not. I usually know that she isn’t so interested in it when I don’t see her reading it again or when she doesn’t want me to read that particular book to her. It’s like a trial and error and over a period of time, you find out their interests and what books would suit them. And as you know, their interests keep changing and hence you also have to keep up with it. In short, it takes effort but it is really worth it. I see many positive changes in my daughter because of this. Not so long ago, I remember, we were lazing around on a weekend not knowing what to do and my husband asked her whether she would like to go to a movie or to a bookstore and she immediately picked bookstore. So, that says something.

I’ve also found that the learning from books doesn’t need to be just academic. Take this book, Colors of Us by Karen Katz. I can’t begin to describe what a difference this book has made in her life. As an immigrant living in the US, I had always been worried about the many challenges of bringing up children in my non-native country. This book has helped her to become more comfortable with her surroundings. Before reading this book, I’m sure she had observed the color differences among people but hadn’t found a language to express her observations. And I didn’t know how to talk about this either. I still remember this one particular day, after we had read this book. She pulled out my hand, placed it next to hers and looked at it for sometime. She said, “Amma, your color is French toast. I think, I’m the color of cinnamon…” And she went on to describe the colors of all her friends in her class. I felt that just to be able to talk about these differences was huge!!!

In conclusion, I would like to again remind you what a difference it makes in a child’s life if an adult took the time to research and read the right books to them. And I can assure you that the process of choosing a book is fun. I always find that I become a child again when I enter a children’s library or a bookstore.