Bringing Books to Life

Recently, my five-year-old son, Walter, got off the school bus, marched into the kitchen and requested a pint of blueberries. Earlier in the day, we had read Robert McCloskey's BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL, so I had a sneaking suspicion why he wanted them. I ran a frozen pint under some hot water and handed them to Walter. "I'm afraid they won't go kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk," I said, mimicking McCloskey's sound effects. "That's OK," he called back over his shoulder. "I'm going to be Little Bear." Off he went into the yard, which in his mind's eye was now the warm grassy hillside where young Sal and Little Bear accidentally swap mothers in their search for berries. Thirty minutes later, he handed back the near-empty bowl, a wide band of juice staining the edges of his mouth. "I see you had to eat like Little Bear," I said. "Yes," he said. "Little Bear doesn't have fingers."

Reading Walter's blue lips, I couldn't miss the message: A great book doesn't have to end when you've read the last page. As the following examples show, the simplest activity is often all it takes to keep the story alive in a child's imagination. What's more, tinkering with gizmos as Homer Price does or actually rolling out Pippi Longstocking's pepparkakor turns reading into the great adventure it should be. The places and plots, scenes and smells, waft right off the page into your living room. You may even find yourselves, as we do, speaking of characters as if they were friends and relatives. Which reminds me: Where is that Little Bear?



Sue Stauffacher is author of the children's novel S'GANA, THE BLACK WHALE (Alaska Northwest Books).