My bookish boy

It’s still light out at Ben’s bedtime these days, so the deal is that after I read him one book, he can read in bed a little bit. I’m always curious, when I check on him on my way to bed, to see what he’s fallen asleep with. Lately, it’s been his picture encyclopedia; he’s interested in the planets, can name them in their proper order, tell you which one’s a gas planet, etc. Meanwhile, I’m thinking, gas planet? did they know that there were gas planets in the 70s? because that’s certainly not something I picked up in elementary school.

Tonight, I could barely see Ben in his bed for all the books he had stacked up next to him. Books we haven’t read in ages, like Margaret Wise Brown’s My World; Who Am I? and What Am I?, his riddle flap books; Kipper; Bob the Builder: Scoop; all his Dan Zanes cd cases (which are nice little picture books themselves); and Puff-Puff, Chugga-Chugga. I wanted to scoop them out from under his arm, but I hesitated. Maybe he’s absorbing some information while he sleeps. Maybe he’ll surprise me in the morning with some new riddles.

2 Comments

  1. Oh, boy, if you were into planets, you certainly knew about gas giants in the 70’s! The big new discoveries since we were kids are:

    1. Rings around Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, and not just Saturn.
    2. Volcanoes on Io.
    3. Pluto has 3 moons.
    4. There’s a 10th planet, tentaively named Xena.

    And around the time Sasha and Ben will be 14, our first probe will arrive at Pluto–we’ll finally get some good pictures!

  2. Libby says:

    Nick sleeps with books, too. He used to put them under his pillow and then wonder why he woke up with a crick in his neck!