More Pooh

Malcolm Gladwell's book, the Tipping Point*, explores how Blue's Clues (a popular childrens television program) perfected the art of keeping a child's attention.  Blues Clues improved on shows like Sesame Street by intentionally doing NOTHING that could confuse children, like use metaphors or use pop culture references that would go over their head.   It works by avoiding anything that would give the child the time to turn their head and be 'distracted' by play.   This new and improved Children's show was also designed for repetition - for the same show to be viewed every day for a week straight, allowing the child to understand more about each 'clue' with each viewing.   


The part about securing a child's full & undivided attention makes me feel all the better in greatly restricting our kid's access to TV, since the value of play is immense, and any benefit to TV is left undocumented, at best.   The part about repetition makes sense on the other hand, and seems valuable in other applications, like reading books.   It's something I've now observed, first hand.


Lily's favorite book, at the moment, is 'Pooh Loves You'.  We often read it multiple times a day.  Over the last few months we have read it more times than I could count.   It is now to the point that I have memorized the entire book, from cover to cover.   This book has no plot or even a discernible theme, but offers a rather blunt force character development by explaining Pooh's various loves (sleeping, running, honey, et al).   She loves it.   


She still laughs at the one climactic build up in the book ('Pooh loves to run and jump and then......[next page].....he loves to run and jump again!'), even after what's surely around 100 re-reads.   Actually, she didn't recognize this climactic build-up on the first reading or probably even the 10th - this was something she was able to garner through re-reading.   With each pass she was able to identify more of the characters, more situations, and more of the items in Pooh's environment.   


With each pass through the book, I also try to convey new concepts or ask her to identify new objects on the page.    So, some times I point to each word as I read it, to show how what I say relates to these foreign symbols (the words & letters) on each page.   Another time I ask her to point out the white flowers or to find all the bees.   I do this, in part, for my own sanity, but it's mainly to challenger her.   


There will definitely come a time, probably not that far off, where this Pooh book will get overly simple, but it's remarkable how much knowledge was learned, or at least reinforced, from reading it.   Until then, I actually look forward to her nightly request - 'more pooh'.


*...I'm not 100% sure it was actually the Tipping Point where this was read.   I may have confused it with another book, but the Tipping Point is a great book (& Gladwell a great author) nonetheless.