Trains and tigers

Last month I started volunteering as a reader at a preschool in Portland. It means once a week I read books with four preschoolers, fifteen minutes per preschooler. It means I have a lot to say about books for preschoolers. So let’s not waste any more time setting this up: the best and worst preschool books.

THE WORST BOOKS

Thomas. Any and all books featuring Thomas the Tank Engine.

There are others I dislike but mentioning them would lessen the impact of saying there is one bad thing in the world and it’s Thomas the Tank Engine. It’s nice that some things are still simple: up vs down, black vs white, good vs Thomas. 

Every kid wants to read Thomas books, there’s a mad scramble for them every time a new group of preschoolers comes in. The books are organized differently every day so the kids go crazy hunting for the Thomas books while the readers hang back, hoping our kid is the slowest kid and doesn’t get any.

Thomas books are the worst, they’re so long and the pictures are terrible. If a Thomas writer is reading this and you’re offended, you need to hear it. There’s no real story, no exciting parts, and kids glaze over three words in and start aggressively picking their noses.

Luckily they can’t read so the pain is over just as fast. “Hello Thomas said Sir Topman Hat, I have an idea said Thomas, let’s turn seventeen pages ahead. Turn another four pages! shouted Annie and Clarabell. Everyone cheered. It was another day as a train. The great story was over.” 

Then I get to pick the next book.

THE BEST BOOKS

The best book is any book read with Ian.

Have you met Ian? Supposedly he’s a four-year-old attending this preschool but he’s probably actually a child actor someone hired and trained to be my favorite person on earth. My first day as a reader he came in with the crowd of not-Ian kids, walked up to me, looked at me, and said “Let's read about gorillas."

Last week he picked a Winnie the Pooh story that I was lukewarm on. It was super long, and the words per page count was gross. But Ian’s really patient and a great listener so I went ahead anyway. In the book, Tigger (who Ian says I do a great impression of) decides that he’s self-conscious about his stripes. 

The book doesn’t really explain what causes this, maybe he was reading a magazine or maybe he noticed that a celebrity he likes doesn’t have stripes, but whatever the reason he decides to get rid of them. His friends help him execute a variety of horribly-conceived ill-fated removal methods, and sometimes before or after they offer to help they’ll mention off-hand that they like his stripes.

“Eeyore says he likes Tigger’s stripes” Ian would whisper, tapping gently on the picture of Eeyore. “I like them too, they’re part of what makes him special.”

Man it was a long story. But Ian was so invested and laughed at every voice and got so discouraged when dumb ideas like covering the stripes with honey didn’t work. And it made me think of dumb things I do, like not smiling in pictures because I think my teeth slant a little to the side. 

It’s weird to say, and probably not the point of being a volunteer reader, but by the end of this book I was feeling pretty choked up, and so was Ian. “That. Was. Such. A. Good. Story.” he said. “What I would love now, is if we could read another.”

Ian can read my mind sometimes. “You make the best snoring noises!” he’ll say, somehow knowing that’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear my whole life. That’s why any book with Ian is the best book. 

And Ian never picks Thomas books.

Japanese werewolf book club

Reading more wasn’t even one of my New Year’s resolutions but I’ve already read a ton of books this year. One of them was called 1Q84. It's by Haruki Murakami who is not only a great author but a four-time winner of the "Best Name" award.

It’s 1157 pages long, but if you take out all the parts that are just very specific descriptions of healthy foods it’s a quick 200-pager. The characters in this book may be fictional, but the foods they eat are very real. These meals are simple, homemade, nutritions, and need to be carefully explained, I’m confident no one ate even a snack without the author telling me about it. Rice, pickled ginger, three slices of radish, a cup of tea, an apple, papaya.

But the non-food parts are an awesome story - scary and beautiful and there’s a ton of really weird sex. Really weird sex followed up by a light lunch of cucumber, shrimp, sesame oil, parsley, edamame, and little bit of green onion and lemon juice.

This book had so many great sentences. One of them goes something like “He looked at his eyes like he was seeing if a piece of furniture could fit in a room.” I’m not a professional writer, but I’ve convinced my employer that I am, and I think that’s a great sentence. Another one is "He drank some tomato juice from the fridge, boiled water, ground coffee beans and made coffee, toasted a slice of bread. He set the timer and cooked a soft-boiled egg." Oh wait, that’s another food description. What about "He made rice pilaf using ham and mushrooms and brown rice, and miso soup with tofu and wakame. He boiled cauliflower and flavored it with curry sauce he had prepared. He made a green bean and onion salad."

It's really hard to find sentences that aren't food descriptions.

Anyway, if you want to read a book and you have a sturdy suitcase or wheelbarrow to carry that book around in, you should read 1Q84. Even if it’s not your New Year’s Resolution, but especially if it is.

This is a picture to illustrate that I have two moons hanging in my apartment, which if you've read the book you would know is an insane coincidence. Can you see them? I think my sister has the best smile in the world and this isn't even a real smile.

I don't know Dennis Gilstad but he's also incredibly interested in food in 1Q84. You can see his diagrams of all the food in 1Q84 here, or if you know him he can probably show you in person.