Baba Who?

Harrison is a reader now, but he doesn't much like it. Harrison reads for information or because of a really compelling story, not just for the fun of reading.

Gracie will "read" through any book she can get her hands on just for fun. Pictures help, but they aren't necessary for her to make up a story. "Yes," I found myself saying once after Grace asked if she could read one of my programming books, "but remember that's about ASP.NET version one. Version three is out now and it's a lot different." Gracie's reading of Harry Potter books is not to be missed. She really gets the rhythm of the prose right, with actual dialog borrowed from her own life complete with "he said"s and "she said"s (much of the dialog consists of people telling Harry to "go back to bed").

Harrison, on the other hand, is much more practical. It's not that he dislikes reading, he just doesn't do it for fun. Harrison reads to learn about his interests. Those interests include dragons, Pokemon, and robots - you know, the usual jock stuff.

So Mrs. Caldwell's suggestion of the Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot series was perfect. Unfortunately, immediately after she suggested the series at Harrison's last conference, his (nearly) middle-aged mother and I immediately forgot it. All either of us could remember was that it was similar in name to something on TV. After a while, it hit us: Ricky Ricardo. It was close enough to find the books on Amazon, so Grandma bought him a set this spring.

Unlike Harrison's Grandma Labuta, who had watched the I Love Lucy series back when they were first broadcast (complete with advertisements for Dinosaur Chow), or his mother and I, who had watched all the reruns on Channel 50 (complete with lengthy ads for the Pocket Fisherman) rather than developing motor skills, Harrison doesn't know anything about Ricky Ricardo. So until he took the time to fully decode the titles, he believed us that he was really reading Ricky Ricardo's Flying Robots. Grace still believes us.

As you can see from the pictures, Harrison is already at work recruiting new fans of the Ricky Ricardo series. He has read them to Grace, but she really prefers to read about Harry Potter and ASP.NET on her own. Kennedy, though, was an immediate fan of the Cuban hero and his bongo-playing robot.

Eventually, Harrison is going to run out of Ricky Ricardo books. Did Gilligan ever do anything with dragons?