BEARS ON WHEELS
By Stan and Jan Berenstain
Random House, 1969
Fire the cannons! Strike up the trumpets! Release the confetti!
A celebration is underway in the Burns household. My daughter, my baby, my how-did-it-happen-so-quickly big girl can read. That’s right, she can read. And her first book was the Berenstain classic BEARS ON WHEELS. (She bought it at the library book sale with her very own quarter.)
Reading is a big deal around here. We all do it and we do it in a very open way. We read out loud together, we read quietly together, we trade books, we have favorites, we have worsts, we delight in movies based on books, we refuse to see movies because the book was just too good. We debate books, we argue books, we share books, we shrug our shoulders and whisper whatever! when someone doesn’t like our book. (Okay, maybe I am the only one who does that.) All of this has made the littlest Burns feel left out sometimes. But those days are over now. She has joined us in the world of words.
Okay, technically speaking, she is pre-reading. There is a great deal of picture-scrutinizing before she begins. Her first choice—by far—is to guess what the words say. But when she has guessed herself into a corner she sighs, places that pudgy finger with the glitter pink nail polish under the first letter, and sounds out a word. Soon the words form a sentence, and the sentence paints a picture, and that picture matches the drawing on the page. (“One bear. One wheel.”) In that moment my little one realizes she can read … and we both nearly burst.
Hip, Hip, Hooray! What a day!