Reading and Writing at Home

During the same preschool year or two that I was starting and then quitting piano, Mom also taught me the alphabet and how to read. She said they knew I was retaining the skills when I spontaneously read aloud the word "ELEPHANT" (if not quite correctly) on a mock ELEPHANT CROSSING traffic sign posted on the road to a local swimming hole.

Spurred on by this unexpected triuph, Mom set me to practice reading out loud, a lot. We listened over and over to the song "Puff the Magic Dragon" which was then a new song on the radio, transcribing the lyrics. I made a comic book illustrating them. It didn't all make coherent sense, so the illustration for the line "green scales fell like rain" pictured a literal rain of triangular lizard scales dropping from the sky. Well, how else would you picture that line?

Previous: About That Jump Ahead in the Piano Books     Next: Back to Piano