Good Boy Fergus!

I started my nightly reading with M and a pile of board books, most of them by Sandra Boynton. We read them all, about 5 of them, and when we finished I was still waiting for my other son to finish his bath and come in for his books. M sat up and away from me and began to look at the books on his own. I found it interesting that he was able to say a few words in the right context for the page he was reading. He was very excited to "read" the books to me. Boynton's books make this sort of interaction easy because of her funny, simple drawings and her simple mostly rhyming text.

When T came in, the first book he chose was Good Boy Fergus! by David Shannon. This is a book that I read to him when he was around 2, and we loved it so much back then that we actually named one of his plastic dog toys, Fergus, after the main character. The illustrations are very colorful, and M was very interested in it too. The text is simple, and the story is told in the voice of Fergus's owner. T loves it because the pictures suggest that Fergus is really quite a naughty dog, but the words of the owner suggest that he is in denial and that he is actually creating a very bad dog through his inconsistent discipline. Kids need to pay close attention to the discrepancies between the owner's words and the pictures.

His interest in this book goes along with the book I commented about in my first post, Gumption. We have read it every night, including tonight. The next time we read both of these books together I am going to ask him to compare them and tell me how they are similar. The story the pictures tell is much different than the story that the words tell. But to understand the book, you have to pay close attention to both.

David Shannon is a great author for boys. Many of his main characters are boys and they are not always good boys. When they are animals, they are also sometimes slightly naughty. Some of our favorites are Duck on a Bike (the ending of this one is great for discussing), How I became a Pirate, and Too Many Toys (I imagine any parent could identify with the mother in this one).