"Read at" is a funny expression, I suppose (does it come from my southern roots?) but it seems to capture what I mean by the way I read certain books. Although many books have narratives that inspire me to read from cover to cover, others are books that I only dip into periodically, or read for a spell and then go back to later.
Some of my "read at" books would best be classified as reference books, while others are longer books that I find myself taking breaks from but going back to. For me, those are most often history books. History tends to hum, like a giant refrigerator, in the background of whatever else I'm reading. I have favorite periods of history I go back to especially often.
"Read at" books sometimes get a bit shortchanged: they can't always be added to a neat little list of "books read this month" or even "books read this season" (like my quarterly reading round-ups). Sometimes I "read at" a book for a long enough period of time that I do eventually finish it, but even then, I find reviewing it more challenging.
So every once in a while, I plan to do a post where I talk about some of the books I'm "reading at" -- the ones humming in the background while I'm busy reading other things.
One such "at" book for me right now is How to Talk to Children About Art by Francoise Barbe-Gall. I found this book by accident when I was looking for another book about art for children: it was one of those eye-grabbers in our county library system. I placed it on hold and then forgot about it until it came in.
But it's a terrific little book. Just the right size to tuck into a bag and take to a museum, if you're so inclined, and it would be very useful there. In addition to a large section of discussions of actual paintings, under the heading "How to Look at a Picture," the book also contains two other sections. One is called "A Good Start" and offers practical guidance on how to help a child develop an interest in paintings, ways to get the most out of museum trips with children, and what kinds of paintings are best to show children, depending on their ages.The ages the author addresses are 5-7, 8-10, and 11-13 year olds. The book doesn't tackle the topic of art with adolescents, but my guess is, if your child is good and hooked on art by the time he or she is a teenager, then further exploration will unfold naturally. Because it only goes up through 13, the ages don't quite equate to the "trivium" stages of learning, but the suggestions for each of the age groups did seem to roughly correspond to learning styles and methods most classical homeschoolers will be familiar with from their understanding of the grammar/logic/rhetoric phases. In other words, the focus of learning moves from concrete to more analytical.
Th middle section, entitled "It's OK Not to Know," includes questions and answers about museums, art and art history. I've learned a lot myself from perusing this part.
The final section offers 30 paintings (produced here in small color reproductions) with more questions and answers, sort of discussion starters/prompts, if you will, about each of the paintings. The author has colored coded the pages so you know which Q&As will help you most when talking with children in the aforementioned age groups.
The organization reminds me of a field guide! But instead of color codes for bird plumage, there are color codes for kids. So the "red" sections provide prompts where the goals are straightforward: "identity what you see in the painting...identify the various elements of a painting" (not always easy even for adults, the author says). Then the "yellow" section provides "slightly more searching questions" to help understand the painting, questions that "require some thought and additional time". Finally, the "blue" section helps you find ways to "consider the painting in relation to the outside world" which includes thoughts about the painter and the work's historical importance.
Some of the practical advice in this book seems so obvious, but I found myself thinking about it a lot when we went to the Carnegie Museum of Art this past Sunday (it was a free day!) with our seven year old. I remembered the author's suggestion that I get down on her eye-level and see what she was seeing (and that's eye-opening!) and also the suggestion that I let her tell me what she liked in a particular room full of art (rather than dragging her over to the things I consider most noteworthy) and then spend time looking at it and talking about it together. We also took the sweet girl's "I'm tired" and "my feet hurt" a lot more to heart, and cut the wandering-through-gallery part of the afternoon a little shorter than we might have normally. I agree that it's much better to have her leave with good memories of really looking at a few things than to drag her around till the whole family's exhausted in some effort to cram in more than she's really ready to see.
I've not read all the notes on all the paintings yet (that's part of what makes this book a "read at") but every time I pick it up, I enjoy it more and learn something else new. I like it so much, I'm considering adding it to our permanent library.
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