no one is happier than me now that the school holiday week has arrived. well, ok, aniq is also happy, of course. we’ve survived the first three months of the school year, unscathed.
one whole week of not having to be woken by our respective alarm clocks beeping at 5.30am, and going through the motions of getting ready and out of the door by 6am. one whole week of not having to breathe down his neck on those damned spelling lists. one whole week of not having to shoo and nag and bark at him to be in bed before 9pm.
but oh. one whole week of thinking up of exciting things to do to keep them occupied. them, because it’s only fair that the sister too gets the week off. besides, what else is a second child for if not to keep the first child company… right??! -_-
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we’d started off the week with my idea of fun – dragging everyone on a bookstore trail. (sorry kids, this is mummy’s version of retail therapy.)
a tasteful little shop with picture books and quirky knick-knacks. i wish it were more reading-friendly, though. but i guess it’s not really meant for children to sit comfortably to browse the pristine copies on the sparsely-displayed shelves…
next stop: Centrepoint. i’d totally forgotten there was a children’s fairytale event thingy going on there, and we met a friendly face from, by far my favourite children’s bookstore, Bookaburra. :)
last stop: Harris Planerds, where i could finally use my Popular card to good use ha ha. rows of tempting fiction and droolsome graphic novels and beautiful classics and even graphic novels OF classics (i saw comic book versions of ‘Emma’ and ‘Sense & Sensibility’). i also went wild and treated aniq to yet another issue of Geronimo Stilton which he’s been attempting to collect (roll eyes). we went in Times the Bookshoop earlier (not counted in my bookstore trail, just because) and i’d refused to buy it for him there because “we can get discount at Popular!”. (i hate that Geronimo rodent.)
speaking of rodents, found the classic Maus for almost half-price…. i’d also only recently discovered graphic novels at the public library. it was like striking a goldmine.
the kids are having a sleepover with their cousins at their grandma’s tonight, and we were supposed to spend this no-children time wisely by going for a movie, like Hugo or something, but…. maybe I should read the book first…
like when Once-ler cut down that first Truffula tree and The Lorax looked all sad and the forest animals gathered around the stump to place a circle of rocks around it.
and when the population of Thneed-ville burst into a song to let the last Truffula seed grow.
i didn’t know i was such a closet softie for the environment.
and while the critics say the movie didn’t truly capture the original spirit of Dr Seuss’ book, and the moral of the story is pretty much what Wall-E had already delivered earlier, i went in with no expectations and surprised myself by liking it well enough.
well, better than the other Dr Seuss movies, anyway. (i especially hated the one with Jim Carrey as the Grinch.)
i also hope they’ll leave them books alone and stop making them into movies and COME UP WITH ORIGINAL STUFF FOR ONCE.
that is all.
now, let’s go buy some more books… made from cut-down trees… (damn you, industrialism/commercialism! sob.)
i was initially a bit iffy about spending $xx per ticket for a one-hour stage production with the kids, but i figured if i could spend $xxx on one ticket to watch a music concert, then it’s only fair that i do the same for them. you know, for the sake of, er, The Arts and such… (and you can tell from the over-fussing of little ‘sweethearts’ and ‘darlings’, chanel/prada-toting ‘patrons of the arts’ in the audience that they could afford plenty more ‘culture’ than me.)
i’ve only recently warmed up to Julia Donaldson’s children’s books, having previously always resisted the ubiquitous (somewhat ‘over-commercialised’) The Gruffalo. i really can’t explain the resistance, except that i was suspicious that the eponymous creature so resembled the ones in Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, and therefore, a derivative, i.e. Not Original. (i can be such a snoot.)
BUT. i did eventually pick it up (out of curiosity at its overwhelming popularity), and then her other works (The Gruffalo’s Child, etc), and what can i say – they really ARE quite brilliant. AND oh-so-English. i think what works especially well are her clever, clever rhymes, the adventurous streak of the protagonists, and the story lines with a twist that somehow always ends with just the right rhyming word without seeming too contrived. (and btw, The Gruffalo has none of the dark undertones like in Where The Wild Things Are, i.e. Not Unoriginal).
i guess you’ll know a good book when your kids spout random lines from it, memorise the plot sequence, and notice minute details in the illustrations – which was what happened with auni after readings of Stick Man. and to see a well-loved book come to life on theatre is to complete her experience (in 4D, no less).
thankfully, the stage adaptation of Stick Man we saw had enough humour to appeal to both children and adults (and is oh-so-English!), so hmm, ok i didn’t feel too bad about that burnt hole in me pocket.
- i use up 4-5 pieces of blotting paper per day, at a rate of 1 piece every 3 hours. and you can be sure the entire blue piece of blotting paper is soaked thoroughly with sebum. gross. shouldn’t 34 be a little past the whole active-sebum-production age?
- i get easily irritated by music on radio. i got into the car this evening and that horrendous ‘on the floor’ song started and my heart started palpitating at the sound of the opening beats and i scrambled for the ipod to save my life and breathed a huge sigh of relief when something less j.lo came on. i love you and your booty, honey, but if i hear that god-awful stuff again, imma stick some louboutins up your pitbull.
- over the dinner table earlier, the boy asked in his usual inquiring way:
A: “mummy, I want to ask you something. why is it that you marry daddy, and daddy marry you, ah?”
M: “i dunno. It’s a big mystery to me too.”
A: “is it you look at him, he look at you, then you fall in love, like that?”
(he says ‘love’ as in ‘laff’, so,)
M: “Ya. I look at him and i LAUGH, like ha ha ha hahahhahahaahahaa.”
he didn’t get it. oh well. i thought it was funny.
- i’m giving up on Orhan Pamuk. i’d started on ‘Museum of Innocence’ last year and only picked it up again halfway through this week. it’s basically about this rich guy who fell crazy in love/lust with a beautiful but poor relative of his, who gave away her virginity to him even though he was engaged to be married, and when he broke up his engagement to ask for the girl’s hand in marriage, she’d already gotten married. then he started pilfering all kinds of things she’s had contact with (spoon, lipstick, ice-cream cone?!), to remind him of the happiness he felt at each moment he observed her touching them, every item and memory of her painstakingly described. OMG OBSESSED MUCH.
- after seeing the boy off on his 6am bus to school, i’d sometimes disturb the girl in her sleep with kisses and tickles. sometimes she’d wake up, then i go back to sleep. (very evil, i know.) this morning while i went back to sleep, she was wide awake on our bed. when i woke up for work, she excitedly told me that as the sun came up, the sky went from very dark, to brighter, to even brighter. she’d been watching the window for over an hour. how nice, to make first-hand ‘discoveries’ or have eureka! moments like that, like you’re the first person to ever observe such phenomena of nature.
- re: boring Orhan Pamuk book, the husband said he took one look at the cover and he knew. could that have applied to aniq’s question…?
“Miss Kinnian teeches me how to spel better. She says look at a werd and close your eyes and say it over and over again until you remember. I have lots of truble with ‘through’ that you say THREW and ‘enough’ and ‘tough’ that you dont say ENEW and TEW. You got to say ENUFF and TUFF. Thats how I use to rite it before I started to get smart. Im mixed up but Miss Kinnian says dont worry spelling is not suppose to make sence.”
- extracted from ‘Flowers for Algernon’, Daniel Keyes
#currentread #ootdmatchesbookcover #FREAK
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the boy was down with one of those 24-hr stomach flus on tuesday, at around 1 in the morning. it was to be his first MC from school.
at 6am he cried out, “but today i got spelling!”
yeah, that was my first thought too, ha ha.
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he did his spelling yesterday, all ten words in one go. and got them all correct. (feough. phew.)
next week’s spelling’s going to be tuffer tougher.
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a bit on ‘Flowers for Algernon’: it is a story of Charlie, a 32-yr-old with a low IQ, who undergoes an experimental brain surgery to artificially increase his intelligence. the result is a rapid rise to great intellectual heights. like a modern-day creation of Frankenstein’s, he begins to question his existence, and what makes up humanity since it soon becomes clear that intelligence alone does not fulfil the criteria.
a subset of the story is the far-reaching repercussions of childhood traumas on one’s psyche. one of the memories Charlie gains from his new-found clarity of mind is of constantly being pushed – and punished – by his mother when he was young, to accomplish tasks other kids his age had already mastered, to no avail, and even to detrimental effect. all the doctors told her to give up hope that he would ever become smart. she eventually sent him away to a facility for the mentally-challenged, for the sake of giving her younger daughter of normal intelligence – aptly named Norma – a normal childhood. for Charlie, these memories and events have remained fuzzy all his life, but when they finally emerge from his subconscious, there is pain, anger, grief and disillusionment in place of blissful ignorance.
the part where Charlie’s mother tried to teach him to read, and him trying so hard to please her yet only succeeding to make her even angrier, made me so, so sad. :(
i ended the book last night feeling wretched.
#greatread
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i gave the boy extra kisses in the morning. i know i’m sometimes hard on him.
they test my patience, each in different ways. but i am just grateful they are normal, average children.
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but seriously, i swear i don’t know what to do about my spelling-nazi-ness!
i’m a little behind in discovering (and enjoying) graphic novels…
we both finished Craig/Thompson’s delightful ‘Blankets’ and ‘Habibi’ over a few nights, and we’re already craving for more! (we even went down to Planerds@313 on the second day of CNY, optimistically hoping it was open, but it wasn’t, to our disappointment.)
i’ve always been a strictly-prose kinda person, but the first graphic novel i picked up – the husband’s copy of Marjane/Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis‘ – surprised me, as a thought-provoking, insightful, evocative piece of literature, for all its comic-like illustrations and black & white panels.
‘Blankets’ and ‘Habibi’ similarly marvelled and moved me.
i personally preferred the more understated ‘Blankets’, a semi-autobiography of thompson’s childhood and adolescence, a beautifully-told memoir of a boy who never quite fitted in, and his questioning of the relationships that formed him during those growing-up years – with his brother, with his parents, with his first love, and importantly, with his religion.
a bittersweet story that i could connect with, for some reason, despite the geographical and cultural gaps.
except, if you look closely, we are in fact of the same generation – certain icons of the early 90s tacked on the walls as clues.
and then, a line from The Cure did it for me. :)
the husband on the other hand preferred ‘Habibi’, an epic tale of a girl, sold into marriage at 9 years of age, who learned to read and write from her husband…
3 years later her husband was killed by thieves, and she escaped from being sold into slavery, along with an 3-year-old boy abandoned by another slave. she brought him up in the harsh, lonely desert, and as he grew older, the mother-son/sister-brother love evolved into something deeper and complex…
and while that, in essence, is the central storyline, what was more fascinating to me were the other stories interwoven throughout, lifted from the Quran and other sources, of Prophets and angels and their relation to the main characters, and in extension, to us, the reader.
and of course, the beautiful, intricate Arabic calligraphy and motifs (amazing coming from a man who grew up in rural Midwest america, raised as a fundamental Christian no less), with poignant ruminations on each Arabic letter depicted in the ‘magic squares’ (exploring the mysticism of Arabic numerology), as each chapter unfolds…
while its hard cover and sheer volume feels as though you are holding the holy book itself, be forewarned that there are depictions of nudity and sex within the pages so you may feel some discomfort if you aren’t able to reconcile such images in close proximity to the scriptures, but otherwise, read it with an open mind and you may end up appreciating the Quran and its teachings, the Arabic language and its aesthetics, and what they stand for, even more…
“When the last letter of the magic squares – Haa’ – reaches out to connect with the first letter – Baa’ – the word ‘Hubb’ – meaning ‘Love’ – is formed. ‘Habib’ means ‘Beloved’. Linked with the possessive ‘my’ – Yaa – it spells ‘HABIBI’.”
‘Stuck’ is a story of a boy whose kite got tangled in a mess of a tree, and his subsequent efforts to retrieve it, his mode of strategy being throw-something-to-knock-something-else-down. i can always raise a few chuckles out of the kids when we read this, especially the parts where, instead of things/people being used for their obvious purposes (i.e. ladder, saw, firemen), he heaves them all up into the tree where they each get, well, stuck.
not only is oliver/jeffers a multi-award-winning children’s book writer and a brilliant artist, he’s also irish… and a DILF. ;)
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