The Lennon

I read John's Secret Dream to the sixers today.  It's a picture book about John Lennon.  The text is interspersed with song lyrics, most of which I sang aloud in my best effort singing voice.  I ended up telling the sixers many stories about my love of The Beatles and my Beatlemania book collection and my trips to Beatle conventions and my grief on the night John was murdered and my trek to the vigil for John on the Marina in San Francisco.  How we held candles and sang songs together for hours in the cool night.  When I asked the sixers, "What reasonable statements do you think can be made about this man, John Lennon?" one of my old faves from 3rd grade said, "He wanted peace."  John did want peace and his songs and bed ins and bag ins and bill boards showed us some funky fun ways toward ending war, if we wanted to.  This is a powerful book and next time I read it, I think I'll make a tape of songs to play as I read.  I thanked the sixers for listening so kindly to my dream filled reading about John.  I'm not sure they were that into John, but they seemed to be giving me space to feel my strong feelings and I thought they were ultrahip for doing that.  (Ultrahip is a word I looked up with a sixer today and it's pretty good here).
Another powerful book I read to k - 2 kids is We Are All In the Dumps With Jack and Guy by Sendak. I told the littles about street children and how they live without families.  Sendak wrote Jack and Guy after learning more about street kids in Brazil.  It was hard to come up with a response that could be considered critical with the littles.  Some made signs about helping kids.  Some make picture books about helping people and animals.  Some just made pictures of the moon in the sky.  They all took it seriously and seemed to like Sendak's work.  This is another book we should all read if we want to.  The artwork is phenomenal.  Thanks to Maurice Sendak.  Well done, Maurice.