My father described his boyhood job of listening in the corn fields. He was eleven. He’d lie down at the head of a few rows, rest his latest Horatio Alger on his belly, and read. And listen to the quiet rustle of the ripening corn and occasionally cock his head for an undercurrent of chomping,at which he would burst to his feet and go galloping down the rows to chase off Bobby Coon. /images/158501racmed.gif)
Dad knew that he had to do the job right since raccoons can wreck the harvest, taking the ripe ears and leaving only green husks, bare ears, half-eaten corn. But this isn’t a piece about Dad or raccoons. It’s about the listening.
I thought of Dad’s listening gig because sometimes in this Cape Cod house with all our family strewn around reading out loud and silently, with books or iPads, I listen to the sound of it, the sound of reading, and think it must be a little like listening at the cornrows.
The sound of our family, aged 8 months to 64 (years, not months alas) as it reads is very satisfying, for lots of reasons, one of them being the breadth and depth–or lack thereof!–of the titles.
Here’s a partial list for these first few days:
Jim Arnonsky’s Crinkleroot’s Visit to Crinkle Cove. (Jim Arnosky also wrote Raccoons and Ripe Corn 
just in case you want to follow up on the listening in the corn field topic);
The Sunday New York Times and The Cape Cod Times; Skin by Mo Hayder (“The inner demons of Caffery and Marley make the turmoils of Rankins’ Rebus or Mankell’s Wallender seem puny and adolescent” says the Times of UK; A Dance with Dragons by George Martin (latest installment in the Game of Thrones series-fantasy);
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
(I talk about this one the same way I talked about Lord of the Rings, it’s that good. “I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.”) ; The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. The heroine is 16 and she.is.just.great. I love her.) ; Where’s Spot? by Eric Carle; Maizy Takes a Bath by Lucy Cousins;
The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde Swift and Lynd Ward (of The Biggest Bear fame): it’s the story of the fat and red and jolly lighthouse that sits on the bank of the Hudson River near the great, gray, and powerful George Washington Bridge. A storm shows everyone that we still need this tiny guy.) ; 
Gooney Bird Greene by Lois Lowry (I love this kids’ book: Gooney Bird is a fine storyteller, and her message to her classmates–that “they too have stories to share–is a good one,” says The Horn Book. Gooney Bird comes to her new school wearing pajamas and cowboy boots one day and a polka-dot T-shirt and tutu on another.; The Diamond Age
by Neal Stephenson 
(it imagines a future in which nano-technology has made life both simpler and more complicated).
More titles to come, but we’re swimming and biking and cooking and eating and talking and sleeping and going out for ice cream (again and again, and yes again and we’ve only been here three days!). I mean there’s more to do than read around here, but I’ll keep listening!
Patty
7/18/11
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