Sep

24

Invitation

September 24, 2008 |

I’ve got a wicked cold today, and can’t really do a long post right now.

But tomorrow is Shel Silverstein’s birthday. I am working that into my lesson on suffixes for tomorrow. I didn’t even know that until I looked up the date to see if I could drum up a “this day in history” style worksheet. Other things happened on September 25th’s throughout history, including a handful of ancient battles, the passage of the Bill of Rights, etc. But this is the one that jumped out at me, because yes, it’s that important.

There are always pieces to be found on books that have influenced celebrities, politicians, other writers, etc. Since the recent much-overhyped NY Mag piece on the death of book publishing, I’ve been seeing more of them, or maybe just noticing more of them. There have been interesting ones and boring ones, mostly about books that influenced people when they were young and learning, books that taught future professional writers and readers how to love their trade. The mix is eclectic, for everyone who swears upon The Great Gatsby there’s an equally adamant promoter of Calvin and Hobbes. (I’d definitely go with the latter). There were a lot of books that pushed me toward reading when I was a kid, some of them good, some of them not, all of them influential. Shel Silverstein’s books were among them. I went through that book so many times that I honestly think I might have become a slightly different kind of reader if I’d never been introduced to A Light in the Attic. And for all the subtle and subversive poetry and broad, sprawling, wonderful novels I read later on, I’m pretty sure those early books prepped me to understand and appreciate the same themes. He was just using funny drawings, and far fewer words.

So in honor of that bard’s birthday, have a poem:

“Invitation”

If you are a dreamer, come in.
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer . . .
If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire,
For we have some flax golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!


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