Books Forever - Son No 2

Son No 2 loves his Animal books. Animals have been his enduring passion thus far and have outlasted Dinosaurs, Star Wars, Pokemon and other equally deep but transient interests.

Big Cats are his favourites and he has easily three books with that same title. As they are published under different publishers, they offer different perspectives and Son No 2 would plough through the books to find the little nuggets of information that may be present in one book and not the others. Besides that, he has numerous books on Predators, Wild Animals and the like.

The first Animal book that Son No 2 read was this edition called "Wild Animals" (see above) under the set of books "A Child's Library Of Learning". It is his firm favourite, as evidenced by its obvious state of use - it has scotch-taped spines and well-thumbed, dog-eared pages hanging loosely, in contrast to the well-kept, pristine state of some of the other books in the set, like "Music And Art". The topic which held his fascination the most was "Which Animal Is The Fastest?" which set out the different maximum speed achieved by different animals. Btw, the fastest land animal is the cheetah which can reach a blistering speed of 113 km/h.

Son No 2 went on to read many other children's books on animals that were available in the market. But there is this one book that became his definitive book. In my mind, when I imagined him with a book, it would be this book.

Son No 2 chanced upon this "Encyclopedia of Animals" (see below) at Borders@ The Curve sometime in early 2007. He really loved it but I hesitated to buy it as the book was not written for his age group and the contents might be too advanced for him - though paradoxically, at the back of my mind, I knew that was precisely the reason why he liked it so much - he wanted more advanced learning about animals. But as his mother, I was equally cautious not to kill his interest by getting him something that was beyond his years - he was only five years old then.

But subsequently, he frequently talked about this book and whenever we visited The Curve, he would want to go and see the book (he could not read that well yet). One day, when I was on my own at Borders, I saw that the book was on offer and it sort of gave me the impetus to make the purchase. I saved the book for his 6th birthday present.

And this book became his most cherished book ever. There was sufficient information for him to digest for the whole year and though he could not read very well what was written, I read to him. And sometimes he could not understand the formal English and I had to translate the meaning to his level. But he learnt a lot. And was proud of it. And I am proud of him.

So far, Son No 2 has demonstrated the ability for deep and self-directed learning. As an educationist, I know how important this is.

As he grows, I have no doubt that he will develop other interests. But whatever it is, if he continues to show the same learning attitude, he cannot go wrong. The challenge now, as always, is not to let the environment douse his flame of learning. And as his parent, I am aware that this heavy responsibility is mine.