Reading and Me

I have always loved to read and was lucky enough to grow up in a family whose parents read. In fact, my father not only collected books, he even sold encyclopedias for awhile, keeping the sample sets of Childcraft and World Book encyclopedias in his office library. That's why I had already read the reading book when I arrived in the first grade classroom. And that's why my teacher resented me. 

If I'm not mistaken, our First Grade Reader was the same one Toni Morrison quoted in The Bluest Eye, with Dick and Jane, those happy white children, getting into trouble and living the American Dream. That was one of the books on my father's office shelves, so I read it the summer before I started school. Mom had been reading parts of the Jungle Book to us, and I fell in love with stories, even thinking of Mowgli's flute and hearing the flute dance as I write this. 

In my world, the story lives only as fantasy, a story as false as the exotic white-washed Mowgli of Kipling's Jungle Book. I see the racist portrayals now--and the gender stereotypes that persist in cartoons, animated films, and picture books. But I also see the words, the beautiful words like "friend" and "play" and "laugh" and "smile." Good words that have bad effects when their placed in a particular order.

But I'm not getting to my story about my first grade teacher putting me in a corner with a different book because I'd already read the primer she assigned. 

I love to read and have since I dived into my first story. Really, pictures didn't move me as much as words, like Mom reading Jungle Book and my memories of Dick and Jane. 

Morrison's Prelude to The Bluest Eye begins with a quote from the first grade primer:

Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, father, Dick and Jane live in the green and white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress. She wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat. It goes meow-meow. Come and play. Come play with Jane. The kitten will not play. See Mother. Mother is very nice. Mother will you play with Jane? Mother laughs. Laugh, mother laugh. See Father. He is big and strong. Father will you play with Jane? Father is smiling. Smile, Father, smile. See the dog run. Run, dog, run. Look, look. Here comes a friend. The friend will play with Jane. They will play a good game. Play, Jane, play. 

In The Bluest Eye, the words passage loses its punctuation, and its meaning is truncated by the racist world to makes Pecola want blue eyes.