Not the same old song and dance!

   When I crawled out of the last millennium to accept a long term subbing job in kindergarten, I didn’t know what a trip through time it would be.

    On my first day, I started a song that I thought all the kids would know: “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly…” They followed me up to the last line. I sang “perhaps she’ll die.” They looked horrified as they corrected me. 

   “NO! It goes ‘perhaps she’ll cry.” OK. I’m a fast learner. So when we got to the part where she swallowed a horse, I sang “She cried, of course!” Wrong again. It goes, “This is the end, of course!” I was later informed that in this kinder and gentler society, no one dies. No one even cries. OK.

   I later went to the library and checked out all the Caldecott Award winning books. Well, almost. Mei Li has been removed from most library shelves because it deals with the Chinese practice of foot binding. We can’t expose kids to anything so unkind and ungentle. OK.

   Realizing that I couldn’t read all 68 Caldecott books in 11 weeks, I thumbed through them and scanned blurbs on book jackets to see which might be most suitable. Reading the blurb on Smoky Night, I thought ‘Eureka!” It was about a boy named Daniel who had a cat and lived through a fire. It just so happened I had a student named Daniel who had a cat and was fearful of fire. I suggested to his mother that she check it out.

   Daniel’s mother was not too pleased to report that after they got through all the race riots, terrorism and bombings, fire was the least of the atrocities.

   I researched Smoky Night on the Internet. This book, which won seven awards, is praised for exposing primary grade children to what race riots are all about. OK. As long as no one’s feet are bound, no one dies, and no one cries.

For Halloween I checked out the Story time-A-Go-Go monster kit from the public library. This kit contains puppets and books carefully selected by the library staff. When we had a few minute before lunch, I randomly pulled a book from the bag: Frank was a Monster Who Loved to Dance.

   As Frank got into his dancing, the text read: Frank did a cartwheel, Frank did a flip. Suddenly his head began to unzip. Out flopped his brain which plopped on the floor, which loosened his eyeball, which rolled out the door. And after his arm fell out of his sleeve, the horrified audience started to leave. But Frank kept on dancing. He said, “What the heck’ and laughed as his head fell off of his neck.

   But it’s OK. He didn’t cry.


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