Junior Reads!

Last night, for once, I got home early enough to hang out with Junior and Oscar. I got home about quarter of eight--so nice that it was still light out and had stopped raining and being cloudy! I invted them over, thenswigged down some OJ and ate some cold black beans with salt straight out of the Tupperware so I wouldn't starve while kicking around a soccer ball.

Fernando didn't have the best luck getting friends to come along. He tried Daniel but either he didn't want to or his mom wouldn't let him because it was late. Then he tried to get the boys down the block to come play but they weren't home. "Aren't they at Gage Park tonight?" I asked, having seen them play on Joey's team in the Park District league.

"Oh, yeah!" said Fernando.

"Why don't you play on that team?" I asked him. He said he used to play, but they lost a lot so he stopped.

Fernando had a lot of great questions for me last night, but we kept getting distracted so I never even really tried to answer them. "Why do the black people hate Mexicans? They want us to go back to Mexico. Even white people say that a lot of times," he observed.

I got as far as "some people are afraid that Mexican people who come to this country will take away jobs for people who are born here, or will work for less money than somebody born here would make," and then..

Oscar said, "I'm thirsty!"

And I said, "Want some orange juice?"

And he said, "Yeah!" and we went back in the house. I'll have to try again with Fernando some other time, maybe when his little brother isn't interrupting.

Oscar wanted to draw, so I got out some paper and my nice pastels. Fernando found my copy of Shel Silverstein's "A Light in the Attic."

"I know that book," he said. "Can I read it?"

"Sure," I replied. "Let's read it together."

So we read the poem about General Gore and General Clay who almost went to the beach instead of fighting their war, but bailed on the beach trip and killed each other instead. Fernando likes that one. He can read it pretty well. We did partner reading for fluency and he didn't even know.

Then I gave a dramatic reading of my favorite poem in there, "Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out." Oscar laughed at it, too.

Fernando wanted to borrow the book, so I loaned it to him. I'm going to get him "A Light in the Attic" for his birthday, which is next week, so we'll each have one in our respective houses.

Rosa came and got them around 8:30 because they had to take baths before bed and before school tomorrow.