Camp Creek Blog

Our wonderful friend Emily gave the boys this fantastic book this weekend: Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song. It's a wonderful addition to their bird books, and the boys absolutely love it.

Jack returned to his bird sculpture this week, but set his armature aside and, using the new book as his reference photo, made a beautiful mostly two-dimensional wire sculpture instead. Running outside to find a stick for a perch was an exciting part of the process.

Tomorrow, he says he's going to engineer a wire harness to hold the bird on its perch.

Of course, the label has fallen off the wire he used, but it is an ordinary spool of wire purchased at the hardware store, thin enough to be bendy, thick enough to be strong and hold its shape. It cuts with ordinary snub-nosed kid scissors. And the only tool he used, other than his own two hands, was a pair of jewelry pliers made to curl wire (no cutters!), and he didn't need those; they were just fun to use.

My ten-year-old has taken our lessons to heart. He is the architect of his own learning. He can learn about anything that interests him. We will provide him with whatever help he requests. (Emphasis on requests.)

If you have ever known a child who reacts to your suggesting a book by saying, automatically, without even thinking about it, "No thanks", you are familiar with this child.

If you have ever suggested to a child an activity that simply reeks of excitement and fun, only to be met with a casual, "Yeah, I don't think so, no thanks," you are familiar with this child.

Now that he is ten, things have improved. I can suggest a book without his immediately saying no. He is reading, and immensely enjoying, Kon-Tiki right now on my recommendation. He is pretty confident now that I won't force him to read a book he doesn't want to read.

Although he still has his doubts.

When he went through a stage of intense interest in Flickr, I pulled out a big pile of Time/Life Photography Series books that I bought years ago at a library sale.

He got very excited about a story about Joseph Pulitzer and how he was the first publisher to include sensationalistic photographs in his newspaper. (This was in the volume "Photojournalism" — these books were published in 1971, btw.) He was talking a mile a minute and gesturing and laughing. Before he told me the story, however, he paused to say significantly, "I wasn't reading about how cameras work or anything. It wasn't about that." It was like he was saying, "I know why you gave me these books — I'm onto you — and I didn't do what you wanted."

The directions he took his interest in — starting with Flickr — were places I couldn't have predicted. We talked about art — what is art, what's not. We talked about how pictures tell a story — or don't accurately reflect the truth. We talked about geography and places we want to visit.

I eventually realized that to him, Flickr was a toy, and he was playing with it. He was looking it up and down and all around and figuring out what it could do. He was running around the room with it making zooming noises like it was an airplane, then he was walking it across the floor and laughing. He was turning it inside out. He was in discovery mode. He was in the zone — the flow state — calm, relaxed, completely plugged in, energetic, and focused.

Anything I did that made it seem like I was dictating what he should do would make him stop in his tracks. It would break the spell.

Over time, I've become better at how I make my offers of assistance — emphasizing it's only a suggestion, and he can take it or leave it as he wishes. And he has become better at considering my offers, not always rejecting them out of hand.

The biggest lesson has been mine. I realized that I can't predict where he is headed. It is entirely his own direction, plotted out according to his needs, his interests, his goals. And I don't want to get in the way of that, so I need to hang back and make sure I'm supporting him, but not tripping him up by trying to anticipate where he wants to go. He'll let me know where he wants to go.

Also see: The Relentless Learner and The Myth of the Reluctant Learner

When Jack was first interested in/obsessed with Calvin & Hobbes, he started by reading the books over and over and over.

Then he started drawing the comics. He tried to draw the characters as closely as he could to the originals. He filled two large sketchbooks with these drawings.

It was at that point that I began to support his deep interest with project materials and resources.

It is fascinating to watch as he makes the work more and more his own, as he becomes more confident. After mastering drawing the characters, he began copying whole strips.

After mastering copying the strips, he moved on to making up his own original C&H stories and drawing those.

After filling a book with his own C&H comics (which were hilarious, and very much in the original style), he invented his own comic, George and Falkin. George was the grown-up son of Calvin and Susie (Calvin married Susie Derkins!), and he had his own imaginary friend Falkin, a stuffed bear.

At this point, I have to stop and just admire my 7-year-old's grasp of storytelling and humor. He drew Calvin's dad the same, but older, and used a lot of the same running gags as the original strip. As Calvin used to pretend to be Stupendous Man, George pretends to be Fantabulous Man. And so on.

He was no longer just copying, he was extending the ideas.

At each level, he sticks with one thing until he feels confident to make the next step. I play no part in this. I just watch and admire his work. I don't say, “Why don't you…?” or “You should…” (Sometimes it’s difficult.)

At each level, he gains mastery (as defined and measured by himself) then moves on naturally and fluidly to the next, more complex thing.

His natural inclination is to stick with something until he thinks he does it well enough. He assesses his own efforts and decides when he’s satisfied.

His natural inclination is to make connections (noting similarities between two comics, among the drawing styles of different cartoonists and illustrators, across story and character development, and so on.

His natural inclination is to reach out to other people — to share his work, to talk in person with artists whose work he admires, to talk with people who do work that interests him.

His natural inclination is to enjoy everything he does. He pours his heart into his work.

If he doesn't someday become a professional cartoonist (right now he says cartoonist-scientist), he may not ever require the exact skills he is learning from this particular project at this moment. But he certainly is picking up a lot of intangibles and habits of mind.

Who doesn't love Maira Kalman?

She lives at the intersection of my three loves: children's books, writing, and design.

She has designed fabric for Isaac Mizrahi, accessories for Kate Spade, sets for the Mark Morris Dance Company and accessories for the Museum of Modern Art.

My boys love her books What Pete Ate from A to Z and Smartypants (Pete in School).

My sister and I have always love-loved the Max books: Max Makes a Million, Ooh-la-la (Max in Love), Max in Hollywood, Baby!, and Swami on Rye: Max in India.

The first three of these were bundled together into the fabulous, now out-of-print Max Deluxe (still available used from Amazon resellers).

Kalman's children's books are so densely illustrated that you can find new jokes in them every time you read them. The Max books especially have dense text as well; the Pete books are easier readers but still have a lot of free humor on the side. We absolutely love these books.

As I am a writer and began work as a copyeditor when I was still in college, I died and went to heaven when Maira Kalman illustrated the famous Elements of Style.

The hardcover book is so beautifully designed, with its front and back covers, inside hello and goodbye, and Kalman's ingenious illustrations, I can hardly bear to use it.

Luckily for me, they have now come out with a paperback version with a wonderful cover ... now I just need a reading copy and another to save.

(I can't help fantasizing that Kalman will illustrate all my reference books. My Fowler's. My Roget's.)

Artist-illustrator-designer Kalman also writes a column, "The Principles of Uncertainty", which appears in the New York Times.

The first dozen columns have been published in an eponymous book.