Caught in a Lie

I think it was Jane Yolen who once said that her children had expressed such gratitude that Jane "never skipped any words" when she read to stories them. This is the standard to which I think we should all hold ourselves. Unless the book "Arthur's Halloween" and your kid is yawning and you've read enough Halloween books today to cross your eyes.

So tonight when I was reading to Claudia, I read the first and last sentences off a page in the aforementioned Arthur book.  But it was a segmented picture- 3 parts.  She knew enough about books and stories to recognize that I only talked about one of the parts.  How could I have been so careless? After she busted me, I feigned confusion and read the whole page.

After this page, Claude watched me like a hawk, making sure I said a lot of words when a page had a lot of words on it. How silly for me to try to get away with it. And her sideways glances made me feel guilty, even though requesting so many Halloween books was clearly a hostile action on her part...

This is the page in question from "Arthur's Halloween".