Posted by
Ed Lilly on Saturday, October 24, 2009 5:15:20 PM
Three years ago our oldest child, Jordan, was in kindergarten. The elementary school encourages parent participation, so when I heard that Carl Reiner, one of my all-time favorite performers, had written a children’s book for Halloween, I decided it would be a great thing to take in and read to the kindergarten class.
The book, “Tell Me A Scary Story, But Not Too Scary!” was a big hit. In it, Reiner tells the story as if reciting a childhood tale to one of his grandchildren. The protagonist is a young boy who has a new neighbor. The neighbor drops something from a box when he’s moving in, and it turns into a scary little night-time adventure returning the object to the neighbor.
Along the way, Reiner has inserted into the story reminders to ask if the story is getting too scary, and if so, he’ll stop. Both Jordan and Ben, who is now 5, like the story very much, and we’ve enjoyed reading it at Halloween.
A few weeks ago, I saw in the Wall Street Journal that Reiner had written a sequel children’s book, “Tell Me Another Scary Story, But Not Too Scary!” So with Ben now in kindergarten, I thought it would be a good opportunity to read BOTH books to the class.
The story in the newer book is less well-developed, and seems designed more to serve as a teaching story to remind children that they should help their friends. It’s also not really as scary, as a story, as the first.
But I was sure that the first story would get much the same reaction from Ben’s class as it did from Jordan’s, where boys screamed like little girls and hid their faces in pillows telling me it was too scary and they wanted me to stop.
Much to my surprise, the kids in Ben’s class were completely unfazed by both stories. They liked them, to be sure, but they really didn’t express any fear or uncertainty as the story unfolded.
So that left me wondering - could it be that in just 3 years, the crop of Lawrenceville kindergartners has become just that much more mature / jaded / cynical? Or, on a more positive take, could it be that so many of these kids have older siblings, and had already seen Reiner’s first book, that they knew the story?
I guess I’ll never know the answer. But it does make me wonder.
This entry is cross-posted here