Of Snakes Sex Playing in the Rain, Random Thou by Clay Reynolds Read Free Book Online

child/auditor is preliterate. If the parent/reader is confronted with an audience consisting of a toddler or preschooler, a few days might be added to that rate.
    Thus, our evening “Weadbook!” sessions go something like this:

    DADDY: [reading] “The Pig Family passes a construction site . . .”
    WESLEY: What’s a construction site?
    VIRGINIA: What’s that chicken doing, Daddy?
    WESLEY: He’s driving a road-grader.
    VIRGINIA: Where’s a wode-gwader?
    WESLEY: He’s going to hit that doggie on the tricycle.
    VIRGINIA: Where’s a wode-gwader?
    DADDY: [indicating the page] Right there. No, I think he’ll miss the doggie.
    WESLEY: Can doggies drive tricycles and road-graders?
    VIRGINIA: Where’s a doggie?
    DADDY: [pointing] Right there, Virginia. I don’t think doggies—
    VIRGINIA: I don’t see a wode-gwader! Where’s the wode-gwader?
    WESLEY: What’s that kitty doing? Is he going to ride the tricycle, too?
    VIRGINIA: [growing frantic] Where’s the wode-gwader?
    WESLEY: Is the kitty going to hit the doggie?
    DADDY: There’s the road-grader, Virginia. What kit—
    WESLEY: Is the kitty going to crash?
    DADDY: No, I don’t think—
    VIRGINIA: [delighted] Wode-gwader!
    WESLEY: Why is that airplane upside down?
    VIRGINIA: I want to see the doggie, [crying] Where’s the kitty?
    DADDY: There’s the doggie, Virginia. The kitty—
    VIRGINIA: Doggie!
    WESLEY: What are the mice doing?
    VIRGINIA: Where’s upside down?
    DADDY: That’s an airplane. That’s upside down. The mice—
    WESLEY: Where’s Goldbug?
    DADDY: That’s another book—
    VIRGINIA: Where’s Godbug? I want to see Godbug!
    WESLEY: [patiently and wisely] That’s another book, Virginia.
    DADDY: [hurriedly turning the page] Well, now the Pig Family is—
    WESLEY: Can we read the Goldbug book, now?
    VIRGINIA: [crying] I want to see Godbug! I want to see Godbug! Where’s Godbug?

    In addition to the multitude of peripatetic, useless characters who crowd the margins of every page of Scarry’s books, he also includes a cast of regulars: Goldbug, Bananas Gorilla, Mistress Mouse, Lowly Worm, and Officer Flossy, among others. These singular worthies figure prominently in certain books, and they have a nagging tendency to turn up as supporting cast in other volumes, as well. The result, of course, is that when they appear with less than top billing in Scarry’s other elementary dramas, performing no less idiotically than the thousand or so other characters in his chorus-menagerie, they have the distracting habit of taking stage center away from whatever dog or cat has been officially assigned the leading role in the story at hand. This occasions much squirming by my tiny audience, and the demands for an immediate return to the star system in children’s literature are loud and long.
    Another major problem with Scarry’s books is the plots—or the lack of them. The insipid activities of these mentally deficient characters are enough to addle any brain, but Scarry ensures adult doddering by supplementing such inanity as a pig mistaking a steam shovel for the family car or a rabbit becoming incurably (but painlessly) stuck in hot, sticky tar on a new roadway, by asking a series of rhetorical questions: “That wasn’t very smart of him, was it?” “She’ll have to be more careful next time, won’t she?” “Oh, he’s a naughty dog, isn’t he?” Only a parent/reader of Scarry’s books knows the incredible frustration of trying to answer to any degree of satisfaction such questions for a child/auditor:

    —Why did he do that, Daddy?
    —Because he’s naughty, I guess.
    —Why’s he naughty?
    —Because he just is, I guess.
    —Will he get a spanking?
    —No, but if he’s not careful, Richard Scarry may put him into another book.

    The unplotted action winds on for pages and pages, and if the parent/reader is lucky enough to fool the child/auditor by avoiding explanations of the activities of about half the characters depicted on each page and