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.
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!
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!