The Parthenon

There is a shoebox model of the Parthenon on my kitchen counter. No one is in it, but tomorrow, it will be filled with thrones and gods.

It’s book report time. All three of my guys have reports due by Monday. They all read their books lickety split – as soon as the assignments came in. Reading isn’t a problem at our house. We’re all readers.

And the reports? You’d think that since Andrew and I basically write book reports for a living (okay, a stretch, but not so much!), that the boys would be genetically predisposed to love writing reports. I admit that this first report of the school year has gone a lot smoother than any last year. The kids are getting more independent. They understand the teachers’ expectations. And comprehension of the books they read is not an issue.

It’s the projects that make my head hurt. Davis is illustrating all the major events in The Wish List by Eoin Colfer. It has typed descriptions of each scene and it’s really very nice. Max had a “paint by numbers” assignment to make a paper house with doors and windows that open to reveal the characters and plot lines of his book, Baseball Flyhawk by Matt Christopher. He did a great job with very little complaining. But the lack of creativity on this project makes me nuts. Reed’s book, It’s All Greek to Me, by Jon Sciezka (one of the Time Warp Trio books) is the reason I have a Parthenon on my counter. Yes, remember making dioramas? I hated those things when I was in school.

While I recognize that the purpose of these projects and reports is to get the kids to read books and think about them hard enough as to translate the story back in some “creative” way, do you remember the pain of book reports? I believe I first learned the word procrastinate during my first book report assignment. So I suppose that vocabulary-building is another benefit of these projects.

I worry that the love of reading can be killed with an inane-enough book report assignment. Or that my “hands off” attitude (I don’t help) gives my guys a serious disadvantage in the grading curve since many, if not most, of the parents “help” quite a bit. Some of the projects look like RISD graduate work.

Well, if all goes well, the boys will still love reading after their book report days are long over. If not, well, at least they’ll have lovely memories of working on dioramas and cut-out houses.