Curious Claude

Well, she's done it again.

Claude recently viewed a story DVD version of Curious George Rides a Bike. This, coupled with her love of her Curious George in the Big City and Curious George Makes Pancakes books sent her into a monkey frenzy, even adjusting her birthday party theme to Curious George. (Two months to go... she has gone from Dora to Olivia to cats to polka dots to monkeys to Maisy to Curious George. Hopefully something will stick once cups and napkins have been purchased.)

Yesterday, while toweling off and changing into jammies, Claude put on her know-it-all-face and told me, "Mama, in George books- George no say it. He no say it. A man tells it. Man does all the talking. George- he no say it." I nodded, told her that she was right- that sometimes another person called a narrator-- like "the man"-- tells a story and that it was a pretty smart thing for her to notice about her stories. She nodded, agreeing to her own smart-ness before wincing and saying, "Mama, I like George stories."

I was astounded to have a conversation about narrators with a 2 year old. (Well, she is almost three.) She's doing what I want young readers in school to do: to spend time with books and think about them. It is so powerful when kids notice how stories are put together on their own as readers. Claude chooses to spend so much time with books: alone, at rest (since she's not sleeping anyway), and being read to. So much about learning to read well is time spent reading and reflecting.

So I guess her Grandmothers are right: she is a genius.