In an effort to get away from repetitive Star Wars books, Paul and I have been spending time with classic literature. I found a list of challenging children's books and we've been enjoying some wonderful stories. The vocabulary is rich and the stories are much deeper than: "This is R2D2. He is an astromech droid. BLAH BLAH BLAH." I particularly love the fact that are details in the classics that simply would not take place in contemporary children's lit, like Christopher Robin's gun or the hookah smoking caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. They always make me chuckle.
At the same time, we've been exposing him (and sometimes John too) to classics of a different nature: Classic 80's movies. The boys love Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and last weekend we watched ET with Paul. He had a million questions, like why the alien was called ET and who were the men in the giant suits and why did they want to make ET sick? CJ & I wondered how we survived the 80's when moms were leaving their five-year-olds home alone and not blaming the school when their elementary student came home drunk. Despite the barrage of questions, many of which went unanswered until X-Files came into our lives in the 90's, Paul loved the movie. We are anxious to share the joy of many other movies from our childhood, including Gremlins and Goonies. Anyone remember seeing Gremlins in the theater? I practically wet myself with fright. Classic.
