Author in the House

So, yes, EJ started kindergarten. It was great. It was hard. It was so many things. I could create a list a mile long with entries like this:

1) EJ loves school. (HURRAY!)
2) EJ is afraid of the loud noises in the bathrooms at school, so she won't use them all day. (BOO!)
3) EJ's teacher is amazing. (HURRAY!)
4) EJ has lots of homework every week. (BOO!)
5) EJ voluntarily (and enthusiastically) does 90% of the week's homework on Monday after school. (HURRAY!)
6) EJ still won't use the bathrooms, despite all kinds of support from her teacher, us, etc. (BOO!)

Still, even with this back-and-forth, there is a lot more good than bad, and I think that EJ is really loving kindergarten. We lucked out, especially given how easy it is in Chicago NOT to have good school options, to have her in this classroom with this teacher. We are extremely grateful.



Of course, if I was a good blogger, the kind that posts pithy and informative tidbits in a timely manner, and does not leave her site hanging on the precipice of a great life change with no resolution, you'd already know all this information. I am not that blogger. Her name is Heather, her updates are great, she takes awesome pictures (especially of her dogs doing parlor tricks), she wrote a poignant book, she's now on HGTV, you may have heard of her. Seriously, go check her out. She's fabulous.

As it turns out, I am not just being bested by the blogosphere these days. Plain and simple, I am no longer the most prolific writer in the house. The Chicago Public Schools hosted a writer's workshop as a part of the curriculum this fall, so EJ spent a good amount of time at school creating her own book, as well as studying what makes a book. Fiction vs. non-fiction, plot and setting, main character vs. secondary character---these were all concepts that EJ's kindergarten class worked through. Week two, as they were starting to learn about reference books, I peeked through the window of her classroom during pick-up to find "FACT vs. OPINION" written on the blackboard. When I asked EJ on the ride home if she knew the difference between the two, she sighed heavily and told me she did not. "Really?" I asked. Another big sigh, then this, "Mom, fact is something that is true for everyone, but opinion is something that may be true for me or for you, but not for everyone. That's it, okay?" This was followed by another exasperated sigh, as if to say, "Geez, do you really not know this stuff?"

Yesterday was EJ's final day of the writer's workshop, which means that they had an author's party during her class. She was so excited to share her book and see all of her classmates' work. What her teacher and classmates do not know, though, is that she has written volumes of books since school started. Every day, I am asked to staple together at least 3 booklets. Most of them are cut into shaped pages (i.e., hearts, circles, etc.), although some are simple folded 8x11 pages, which EJ calls, "real booklet books, like the booklets you get places with rectangle pages." Some of these books end up with elaborate drawings, and as she flips through the book each time, she makes up elaborate stories to go with these pictures---repeated readings yield totally new stories, all with the stable set of characters and settings she has created with her markers. Other books are very informational, almost like scientific observation journals, with the names and pictures of things she has seen for her "collections." Then, there are the songbooks. These are my favorites.

After four years of Music Together, EJ is taking a music class for older kids this year, and it seems as if all of the reading and writing she is learning in school is merging with the solfege and song-building she is discovering in class in the form of songbook creation. She takes the tunes to songs she knows, layers on her own words, then writes these down into her books, singing them for us and her music class. Her best work is an ode to her favorite babysitter (ours, too), Kate. The song is called, "How I Love Kate," and is sung to the tune of "May There Always Be Sunshine." Seriously, her song makes me chuckle and get misty every time I hear it, with sweet notes like "Kate loves to play with me, I know she loves me, oh how I love Kate, she is so great." She's also recently written one called, "I Love New York," a song that has less to do with New York than the fact that her friend Phoebe lives there, and she loves Phoebe. In the song (set to "Hey, Lolly, Lolly"), she describes how she loves New York the state, but there is a city called New York in New York state, and isn't that silly? She then clarifies that Phoebe does not live in the city and state, just the state, and sings "I Love New York" roughly 25 times to close it out.

While I can't say that I love the 25 thousand pieces of scrap paper that I now find everywhere from her book cut-outs---on the floor, on the tables, in the halls, etc.---or being woken at 6:07 in the morning with a stapler in my face and the request to assemble another book, the look of joy and pride and excitement on her face as she works on these books is unmatched. When she told me last week that she is the author of songs, and I replied by saying that, actually, when you write the words for music that someone else has created, you are called a lyricist, her eyes widened like saucers, and she just beamed. "YES, that is what I am now. A LYRICIST. That just sounds GREAT. I'm an author of books and a lyricist of songs." That is worth a million scraps of paper for pick-up.

School is out today, and as I type, she is alternating between two works: a Halloween songbook she'd like to finish in time for next week's music class (best line: "The bats are asleep during the day, because they are nocturnal, but they wake up for Halloween"---she hasn't quite figured out how to write that all out yet), and a new book that she started today, which she is calling her face book. Hilarious. To quote her, "It's not like your Facebook, mom, because it is a real book, not just a computer thing, and it is just going to have faces in it---faces, and the title 'Face Book,' and then a line that says, AUTHOR and MY NAME in all capital letters."

By all accounts, I'm happy to be eclipsed by the new writer in the family. Maybe she can keep this blog updated soon, too.