The Book Report
I have a confession.
While I fancy myself as a pretty decent writer…
having written hundreds of TV commercials,
having completed several (never-to-be-sold) screenplays and TV pilots,
published a number of articles for magazines and newspapers
and this blog…
My confession?
Ironically, while writing has been my life-long passion…
another life-long truth:
I AM A BAD READER.
True then, true now.
I mean I do know how to read (without moving my lips),
and I do love and respect the written word,
it’s just that…
I often wind up reading the same passages over and over again.
I’ve probably started hundreds of books…with our ever finishing them.
So, because of my deficiency, as a kid, I didn’t much like reading.
My Mom tried with me.
She’d dramatically read aloud to me from a book…
and then at the most exciting point, she’d hand the book over to me…
“I’m done”, she’d say.
If I wanted to know the ending…it was up to me.
Sadistically helpful.
I do remember how some more ambitious school friends of mine
took the school-offered speedreading class.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite Woody Allen jokes:
- “I recently took a speedreading class and I have to say it was amazing!
I just finished reading Tolstoy’s 1200-page “War and Peace” in 45 minutes”.
“Wow! That’s incredible! And you were able to have good recall?”
-“Perfect…I think it was something about Russia.”.
Something else my elementary school offered was a weekly “book sale”,
where each student had the opportunity to purchase books from a wide variety
offered by Scholastic Magazine.
It was exciting and empowering to make our personal selections, fill out our checklist,
and the next week the books would magically be delivered to our classroom.
I liked the idea of getting a weekly “present”…more than I did the books themselves.
My selections followed a distinct pattern:
See where this was going?
But then I also ordered books from “The Landmark Collection”.
Most of these were books based on history…but told in kid-friendly style.
I also liked their biographies,
My favorite was the story of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
I remember how thrilled I was to find out that my President had a “straight D average in school”!
A fact up I brought up each time I received my report card!
But more than any other books,
I loved…
The Black Stallion series, by Walter Farley.
A dozen books about the adventures of a young boy and his horse.
Something about them clicked with me and I would devour them cover to cover
as soon as I got them home from the library.
NOTE: Recently, I shared the original with a 14 year-old I am mentoring.
He also is a “poor reader”. But we read a chapter every week, discuss it
and go through the vocabulary. We both love it!
Besides my books of choice,
I still had to deal with the teacher-assigned books.
We had to read a book a week…and turn in the dreaded “book report”!!!
It was a chore, a challenge, a nightmare.
I did not like it.
My Mom was on my case constantly about my getting it done.
NOTE: This was before I discovered the “miracle” of Cliff’s Notes.
One week we were assigned to read 10 short stories of our own choice
and hand in a book report with a synopsis of each.
With one day left, I had only read 8 stories.
Panicking, I had to be resourceful.
For “Story #9”…I wrote about a Twilight Zone episode.
For “Story # 10”…I made up my own story (including an author’s name).
Points for creativity? I never got caught.
While I dreaded doing the weekly book reports,
what I did like …
was that each week, a different pair of classmates was chosen
to “present” their joint book report in front of the entire class.
We could choose our own book, our own partner…
but we were strongly encouraged to make our presentation “entertaining”.
Of course, I always paired up with my best bud “Heintz”,
my fellow class clown and troublemaker.
I remember us spending a lot more time on staging our “entertaining” presentation
than actually reading any book.
Two of our more memorable book reports stand out:
The first was a book report on a poem …
(Not really sure if that was allowed).
It was “Casey at the Bat”.
We found a recording of the poem,
brought our record player to class,
and as the narrative played, we acted out every line (sorta).
To make it even more “entertaining”, we presented in costume.
The two of us 6th graders,
somehow tried to squeeze into our 3rd grade Little League uniforms.
As we over-theatrically recreated the dramatic game,
miming the pitching, hitting, catching, throwing, running,
(along with a lot of laughing),
our tightly-strained uniforms couldn’t take it!
Almost at the same exact time,
both of our baseball pants bottoms ripped…
exposing our nearly bare butts to our audience!!
First embarrassed,
we were soon rolling on the floor in hysterics!
The class (obviously) LOVED it!
(Even the usually stone-faced Mrs. Tannenbaum couldn’t contain her laughter).
The “legend” of Casey (and Skollar & Heintz) would live forever!
The second standout book report was for the epic novel, Ben Hur.
Of course, neither Heintz or I ever read any of the 620 pages…
but we did see the movie.
Once we decided on our “book” choice,
we had to choose which scene to recreate.
The Chariot Race would have been cool…
but no, it was a tiny classroom.
We considered the visit to the leper colony…
Yeech!...too disgusting even for us.
We settled on the dramatic scene of a young Judah Ben Hur,
watching a military parade from the roof of his house
and accidently dislodging a loose tile hitting the Roman Governor,
knocking him off of his horse…resulting in his getting arrested for attempted assassination.
Pretty damn dramatic, huh?
However, it may have lost something in the “production”.
As Ben, I wore a collarless white “blouse” (I think it was my sister’s).
The role of the Roman Governor would be played by Heintz,
(who for some unknown reason wore a gold sports jacket backwards and a football helmet(?)
The “roof” was an empty table, with a large dictionary on it (“the tile”).
I stood shakily atop the table,
with Heintz squatting on the floor directly below,
pretending to be on horseback, waving to the “crowd”.
We come to the big moment….
the turning point of the entire epic…
all eyes on us!!!
Heintz shouts out… “All Hail the Governor of Judea!”
With that, I move my foot slightly forward
and knock the dictionary/tile onto Heintz’s helmeted head.
It drops to the floor with a thud.
That’s it.
Presentation over.
End of book report.
Quite a moment.
Dead silence from the class.
Perhaps we should have gone with the lepers.
Would love to hear about what were your favorite books as a kid…
and/or any memorable class presentations
