All too often I hear the lament that Dad’s don’t read to their children and this is my opportunity to applaud the Dad in this poem. If children are to become life long readers, they need both moms and dads and everyone else to read to them when they are young.
A love of story and the closeness that is communicated when a child is read to is very likely the single most important reason why children become adults who love to read and know how to find pleasure in reading. Readers are born on the laps of their parents.
The Story of Ferdinand the Bull” by Matt Mason
Dad would come home after too long at work
and I’d sit on his lap to hear
the story of Ferdinand the Bull; every night,
me handing him the red book until I knew
every word, couldn’t read,
just recite along with drawings
of a gentle bull, frustrated matadors,
the all-important bee, and flowers—
flowers in meadows and flowers
thrown by the Spanish ladies.
Its lesson, really,
about not being what you’re born into
but what you’re born to be,
even if that means
not caring about the capes they wave in your face
or the spears they cut into your shoulders.
And Dad, wonderful Dad, came home
after too long at work
and read to me
the same story every night
until I knew every word, couldn’t read,
just recite.
