Brooklyn Reads
Posted on June 29, 2005 by Michelle Orange
It wasn't the toughest crowd around. Nothing was thrown, hurled, hoisted or spat out, in fact aside from little Khaled's well-intentioned prostrations in the front row ("Louder!", I believe, was the gist), the end-of-the-year, all-star reading that took place at 826NYC last week was positively civilized. How could it be otherwise, when kids who have worked so hard are gathered to read their work to their peers, the tutors who have bent over various scraps of paper with them, and the parents who have ushered them to and from 826NYC's trick bookcase door all year long.
It was a happening, a scene, a zeit in mid-geist: there were cupcakes. I was personally a little sad to see the school year come to an end, but I am an incorrigible nerd. To be fair, however, in this case I was really going to miss the kids, some of whom I met on my first day back in September, and some who showed up along the way. It was a lovely end to the year to see the kids reading their own stories from handily bound mini-anthologies. As far as I know, everyone's name was spelled correctly, and hence no lit-diva tantrums to report.
It was standing room only as the usual Tuesday tutors were joined by other-day-of-the-week tutors and some student faces I hadn't seen before. Didn't somebody British take a poll a couple of years ago and determine that most people's number one fear is public speaking? It beat death, people. Now that's either some kind of evolutionary glitch or they only polled tongueless people from Shyland, because the children of Brooklyn beg to differ. They're scared of Robot Monkey Kings, maybe, but not telling you about them.
And so we listened and cheered and were entertained. There were a couple of unscheduled readings, solicitations were made by Vanessa (and a puppet whose name I did not catch), for science experiment help and ever-entrepreneurial Brendan for two-year, locked-in subscriptions to his widely read comic, "Utencil Boy vs. Buckethead". My attention wandered but once, and then only because I sensed the presence of cupcakes, and though Joan and Julia masterminded the materialization of food brilliantly (literally behind the backs of the audience, so that at the reading's conclusion it seemed to have appeared by magic), when it comes to stealth snack-bombing a room, I can smell a pretzel at 50 paces.
I don't know if proud is the right word to describe how I felt, and how I think all the tutors felt, watching the kids clap for each other and suck in their breath as they took the podium. It seems too small. We were proud of the kids, of course, because how many 7 or 8 year-olds do you know who can a) write a good little story and b) stand up and read it to a room full of people? We were pleased for them, too, because having the opportunity to take that kind of ownership over something you make is rare at any age. I was proud of the adults around me, the tutors and the parents and people wrangling all of us to make this whole thing happen. My time at 826NYC has been the highlight of nearly every week I have spent there since it opened. Where were these kids last year, on a Tuesday in late June? And where will they be this coming fall? I'm so proud to know.
Posted by Michelle Orange