Tricked Into Reading
By Kevin Gray
I’ve always blamed the book, “The Cat in the Hat”, for my having “flunked” second grade. As if it happened yesterday, I can see my teacher placing this brand new book with the blue-laminated cover on the book shelf right next to my desk. Day after day, I sat there while the cat, along with “Thing One and Two”, bounced around inside my head. The kids in the story appeared unprepared for each coming mishap.
By the end of that year, my mother called it “being held back,” but I knew better. In the long run, my being “held back,” was the best thing that could have happened to me. Best of all, the pages of that book are still bouncing around inside my head, because I had been that kid, who chose to think about his actions after the fact and didn’t have a cat or “Thing One and Thing Two” to clean up my messes.
That cat certainly knew how to bend the rules and just as easily clean up the mess. What kid wouldn’t like that story line? But I also knew there was more to this story than I realized, even at such an early age.
“The Cat in the Hat” came to mind recently when Dan Lybarger, a former student of mine at Paola High School, placed a story with the online Huffington Post. Danny had connected for a telephone interview with Al Jaffee, one of the cartoonists and writers, that had made “MAD Magazine” the irreverent publication that thrilled both Lybarger and me. Did the Cat lead me to “Mad Magazine” somehow?
When Dan called, he was – for good reason – excited about his luck. I wasn’t surprised about Huffington accepting Dan’s story. Dan has been a movie critic with pieces placed in the Kansas City Star and on a variety of online sites for many years.
I couldn’t help but think about Dan’s own efforts at editorial cartooning back in high school. Back during the 1984 presidential campaign, Dan dealt with the education policies of then candidates Walter Mondale, then vice president under Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. He had “Dr. Fritz’s Pharmacy” and “Fast Talking Ron’s Medicine Show”. Much to Dan’s delight, he met Walter Mondale in 2007at the University of Kansas’ Dole Institute and had Mondale autograph the cartoon on the actual newspaper page on which it had run. “That was a thrill,” said Lybarger.
As odd as it sounds, Danny admits to reading James Joyce’s, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” because of the influence of Al Jaffee and other cartoonists and writers at “Mad Magazine”. In my own case, I was a lazy reader as a boy, preferring comic books and “Mad Magazine” to “real books,” and taking the time to sit down and read a book, yet, I, too, read James Joyce and majored in English/journalism, because I had grown to love reading. The longer the novel the better. Dan, too, majored in a English. But, unlike Dan, I was made to read “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” in my high school senior English class, which at the time took the fun out of the reading.
I had to laugh when Dan told me how his mother had used “Mad Magazine” to trick him into reading. “Despite my mother’s best efforts (being an English teacher), I often wondered why I had to sit with a book. It required a person to spend hours immobile, which was difficult when I was a boy,” Lybarger said.
Comics required a certain amount of concentration, he explained. Even comics require a reader to concentrate on each frame and absorb complicated information. When I knew I was going to get a laugh at the end of the process, it got easier. Consequently, it got easier to read text and images that didn’t have instant payoffs. My mother baited and switched me with Mad. For the naughty, cynical laughs, I became a reader whether I wanted to be or not,” Lybarger said.
As for me, I’ve always attributed my parents’ willingness to let me read just about any print matter I came across. No doubt, this led me to the enjoyment and satisfaction I’ve found as a teacher and becoming somebody who enjoys sharing a love for the written word with others.
Nor can I forget my first second-grade teacher, who brightened my day by placing ”The Cat in the Hat” so near and unintentionally drew what little concentration I might have devoted to her over to the blue-laminated book cover. And let my imagination loose!
Short URL: http://osawatominews.com/?p=782
Posted by admin
on Jan 12 2011. Filed under Kevin Gray, Opinion.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry