The Toys on 365 are celebrating International Literacy Day this week. Three of the dinosaurs came to the library with me. Two are pretty good readers -- the Triceratops (One half of the infamous Triceratops Twins) and the Apatosaurus youngster. The Rhamphorynchus has had some problems with reading and gotten discouraged. So the other two offered to give him a hand.
All three were totally blown away with the number and variety of books in our Manhattan Public Library. They started running off in three different directions, and I had to rein them in and insist we stick together. I'm NOT losing track of a dinosaur again. We had plenty of time to all see what we wanted to see -- and we could check out books on whatever subject they wanted.
The Apatosaurus got all excited when he spotted a copy of the big dinosaur book Frank has at home, but I told him we shouldn't use our library time on books we already have -- and, besides, they know all about dinosaurs! The wonderful thing about reading and libraries is the opportunity to see things we've never seen, and learn things we didn't know before.
We ended up in the section on bird books. The Triceratops was explaining that birds are distant relations to them. Since the Rhamphorynchus can fly, that interested him tremendously and he wanted to check out a big book on the birds of North America. I knew that was way beyond his reading level, so we went down to the children's room. He got sidetracked over by the board books and puzzles for toddlers -- way BELOW his reading level. But we (actually the Apatosaurus) found a great book on vultures. They liked it because just thinking about vultures gave them the shivers. (I think they've been highly influenced by Dan's interest in horror movies.) I gave it a look and decided it was OK and appropriate reading for the two young dinosaurs -- very educational. So we checked it out and the three of them settled themselves on a comfy chair with the book as soon as we got home. In the snap I took of them, the Triceratops was coaching Rhamphorynchus on the word "Egyptian."
