One of the things that I do in my capacity as au-pair is listen to the seven-year-old read little books for his homework, correct him when he makes mistakes and chivvy him when he stops. This is sometimes quite fun, and sometimes quite tedious, depending on what he has to read and how annoyed he is at having to do this instead of being on the computer. Today's book made me laugh.
Most of the books he has to read are pretty stupid, although this school year is better than the last. When he was in Yr. 1, I swear they were nearly all about really boring birthday parties, or buying fruit. But this one is both quite mundane and also completely absurd. So this kid's dog goes missing, and it turns out some mentaller from the cheese shop chased it down the road and locked it up in a hut on the beach (?!), but then an old woman hears it barking and lets it out. And then on the last page, a magic staff is introduced. Seriously, this played no part in the rest of the book, but suddenly it's all in a weird font? The main text on this page reads:
"Skúlína is proud and waves her walking stick. A magic walking stick! Then all the friends eat pasta in the living room round Óli's house."
Pasta. Of course. How else could this story end? In a way, this is more spacy than those magic key books we used to read in primary school. At least then the magic was introduced at the beginning and was actually relevant to the story. Although I still find it ridiculous that the main characters were called Biff and Chip.
No comments:
Post a Comment