My niece having her first willing interaction with another child at a children’s reading and music event.

First, I chose this picture because and to capture it because this is my niece and she is very cute but also, she usually on most occasions refuses to interact with other children but, this was the first time she willingly interacted with another child her age. I thought this was much more important to capture than myself.

I attend this small library event with my niece, it was a reading of children’s literature after which followed a small music session with plastic kid instruments. This event in my local Staten Island library features the neighborhood children and their moms, dads, grandmothers, basically anyone that is willing to take their energetic toddler outside to the library. Many families are regulars and take part organizing each weekends event. Many moms take turns reading the book to the children and leading the session. Usually, the moms will read Dr. Seuss or a Sesame Street book or something very popular among the toddler audience but, this time was very different. This time the local Staten Island mom chose to read “What Do You Do With A Problem?” by Kobi Yamada. When I heard this title, it didn’t seem like a book that would be popular amongst a 2-4 year old audience, on a Saturday morning in the library. However, it was much different than I thought it would be. When she started to read, all the children were suddenly quiet, still, and very attentive, a state that I have not seen my niece in before. When she was reading, she would quickly read over the text at the bottom of each page, but that is not what kept the children so focused. It was her description of the images. She would specifically hold up the book and point to each image, showing the children what they should be focused on. She would point out small things in the illustrations rather than having the children focus on the whole image. She would point out the boy’s spike hair and how his umbrella matched his hair in the spikes and the color. She would point out that the boy in the illustrations was always caring a backpack. With her words she would always point to what she was describing helping to engage the children. She would even have the children come up and point to things like the boys backpack or his umbrella or his backpack. The colors in the illustrations were not particularly noticeable they were closer to dark tones and earth tones which I thought would be a problem for toddlers but her description of the purple sky and the boys characteristics and the continuities within the illustrations seemed to keep the children engaged. With each page, some children would point out saying “oh there is his backpack” or “there is his umbrella”, the reader gave the children something to look for in each page which kept them engaged. Personally, hearing something being so dramatized forced me to come out of my head and forced me to think beyond my own reading voice. It was different to see someone reading at me instead of my own reading voice reading at myself. It sort of took an inside experience and made it an outside experience. The gestures that the reader made changed my visualization of images and changed the way I see images now and the way I read imaginative words. When I read Open City, I imagined Teju Cole pointing to all the places he went which emphasized those images in my head and helped me remember them. Also, going to a public reading helped me realize that there is a whole sphere of reading beyond my head which made me fell kind of small, but really fascinated me at the same time, showing me that there is another whole way to understand readings and visualize them for this matter. All in all, definitely an enlightening experiencing and a good way to see how children in my area are engaged and being exposed to a new sphere of understanding, while seeing my niece come out of her shell!