I did a book-reading in a school last week. Due to a mix-up on the school’s part, although I was supposed to read to grades K through 4 in an assembly, I wound up reading to two kindergarten classes crammed together in one room and then to two first grades similarly sardined together in another classroom.
The kids were well behaved during the reading, but when I did my usual Q&A session afterward, the kids got off on a tangent.
The book concerned a woman who gives love and attention to a tree. Early on in the Q&A session, one little girl who raised her hand turned out not to have a question. Rather, she had a statement: “Sometimes my mother doesn’t pay attention to me when I want her to.”
I replied, “Maybe she’s in the middle of paying bills or cooking dinner, and she’s all involved in what she’s doing. But I’m sure if it was something really important, and you said to her, ‘Mom, this is important!’ she’d look up from what she was doing and pay attention to you. If the house was on fire and you said, ‘Mom, there’s a fire in my bedroom,’ she’d stop what she was doing and pay attention.”
A boy raised his hand. I hoped this would be a question about the book or a question about how books get made, or something back on track. But it wasn’t. In fact, it wasn’t even a question. “Our house was on fire once!” he told me excitedly. “The fire engines came and everything!”
Another little boy’s hand shot up. He didn’t even wait to be called on. “Our neighbor’s house was on fire one time!” he reported excitedly.
Another little boy chimed in. “Our cousin’s house had a fire.”
Then another boy: “I saw a big fire once!”
At that point I broke in. “Does anyone have any more questions about the book, or how books are written, or how they’re made, or anything?” But they had long since lost track of the book’s theme. Silence descended on the room.
I learned a lesson that day: Unless I write a book about firefighters, I will never mention house fires in a Q&A session with little kids again.