Diary of Fabian's explorations of the world

Friends keep on telling me that I ought to keep a diary of Fabian's explorations of the world. But I've decided to instead bore anybody who reads this blogs with some of the things he's up to these days. Of course, I'll only describe literacy-related developments. I said 'bore' because in a discussion with a group of undergraduate students yesterday, they showed very little enthusiasm for blogs. Not interesting, they said, and people can write anything they want on their blogs, so why shouldn't anybody get excited about this? Interesting comments, I thought. But not good for my seminar (the discussion was part of a seminar), because my question about blogs did not get much of a reaction. Making me, as always in these situations, feeling stupid. But back to Fabian! I've been trying since quite a while to get him interested in books. Usually, he likes them, but not for reading. For him they are for playing. He does, however, have a wonderful habit of copying me and Kay when we sit in the living room with him reading the Guardian. When he sees us, he picks up a book, opens it and holds it high, as if he was reading.

When I try to read a book with him, we always sit in the same corner of the room. This is also the corner I sit in when I read on my own, while he is playing. A few days ago, I sat in a different spot and I wasn't reading. Fabian picked upone of his picture books and he went over to the corner I usually sit in. He sat down on the pillows I normally use. I thought he would now start to 'read' his book. But instead he looked at me, held the book out towards me and invited me to come over and sit with him. Which I promptly did!

Uta