“Best Reader”
The enormous brown bear was approaching softly behind the delightfully pink duck preparing to wring his bare paws around her neck and throw her into a cauldron of boiling stew.
We turned the page.
While I giggled at the impracticality of a bear boiling water to eat a duck, especially a pink duck, I lifted my head to find Matthew tiptoeing about the room showing the meanest, most savage look his cute face could conjure. All the time, tiny Monica sat snuggled next to my arm honestly scared to flip the page and find her favorite pink creature in a bear’s “tummy.”
It was one of those moments of my hours spent reading with youngsters at the library when it realized exactly how much, as a “grown up,” I was missing.
I remembered the Thursday when victoria rushed into the reading room presenting in her small hands a golden award from school. “Best reader,” it glistened. A smile came across my face as I peered into the eyes of the small 7-year child who just last year had been pushed back in first grade because her reading was not up to par.
It was the same smile that had flooded my face six months previously, when victoria joined the reading program and I saw the other volunteers instantly point at me. Our boss had agreed with them, knowing I would use my calm nature and kind way with youngsters to motivate our new student. I had nodded firmly, smiling, not just because I was glad of the confidence they had with me, but because nothing would make me happier than taking on the job of helping victoria improve her reading.
After spending the first session replying to an incessant stream of inquiries, I recognized that victoria’s talkative nature and impatience for answers overpowered her desire to sit down and read. I appreciated her energy and voracious curiosity and encouraged it with my own passion. Yet, with every interest she displayed, I brought her to check the library shelves in search of a connected book. I watched her eyes expand with excitement as I tirelessly helped her press through the stories, a voyage in quest of her answers. Some of the books I chose were tough for her, but we went through them together, stretching limitations and fulfilling the need for knowledge. In books, I promised her over and again, she would find all she wanted to know.
Taking her award in my hands, I couldn’t help but be proud that part of this dazzling piece of paper was likely my doing.
My thoughts were disturbed by victoria’s chant. “I won best reader! ” she exclaimed again and over bouncing between feet as her arms waved from side to side. Without hesitation, I followed. Holding her certificate up for everybody to see, I matched my footing with hers as we jumped the length of the room chuckling.
Whether it is victory celebrations or conversing in different voices, everytime I am around these kids, I find myself being pulled into their youthful world—a world of simplicity, of insatiable wonder, and of pure innocence. It is an universe in which if everything is not great, it definitely can be. And with a simple “prayer to god” or “kiss on the boo-boo” it will be.
Though I go in each week to be these kids’ teacher, I come out, having been their pupil. They have introduced me to a side of me I never known existed.
As I join college, it is not just my intelligence or my gathered information, but also the youngster in me who will bring success. This child will jump to try every new activity with an excitement that cannot fade. She will ask questions of everything she sees, of everything she hears and of everything she reads. She will dream large and for every step she stumbles upon towards her dream, she will get right back up and step again, this time, a bit more carefully. And she will do all this, approach every life challenge or achievement with a smile- a wide contagious smile.
