Nonfiction

I know it's a terrible cliche that kids ask their parents a lot of questions -- and it's an even worse cliche that the parents often don't know the answer. Recently Isaac has asked me:

• Are germs heavy?
  
• Why is the sky always black in space?
• Why did the dinosaurs die?
• What's on the other side of the center of the earth?

And, of course:

• Why did our shop vac break?

This is nothing new. About six months ago I compiled another list of the questions Isaac was asking, which included:

• Why does chocolate melt?
• Why do skunks stink?
• Why does the sun come up?
• Why do pistons go up and down?

I always do my best at stumbling through an honest answer, although Isaac doesn't always follow me, because eventually it will start to make sense to him. And in time he will understand things much better than I do, and then I can ask him questions! Temperamentally, I think he's one of those people who really wants to understand how things work.

Isaac enjoys reading nonfiction, which surprised me at first, because I don't remember liking to read about "real" stuff when I was a kid. (The first book Craig remembers reading, however, was called "The Sun is a Star," so there you go. Is this a gender thing?) At first the only nonfiction books I brought home from the library for Isaac were about vehicles, and of course he loves those. But eventually I realized that he wants to learn facts from books, in addition to being entertained by language and story, so we began exploring the nonfiction section.

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When I was a child, I assumed that my mother had attended some kind of educational program designed for future mothers, because she always seemed to know everything. Didn't she go to a special mommy school just to learn the answers to all the questions I had for her? And maybe she really did know everything, but I am beginning to suspect she faked it a little bit. After all, I have an education that is bizarrely identical to hers (bachelor's in English lit, master's in library studies, both from UC Berkeley) and I'm not exactly sure why chocolate melts.

Actually, that one sounds like a question for Isaac's father, the chemist.

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Isaac's not all fact and no fantasy, though. He'll inform you that there are special tigers that can live at the center of the earth, and that they eat the moles they find there. Also, even though most of the dinosaurs died because the climate got too cold, Loader Driver (Isaac's alter ego) has dinosaurs at his house in a special cage with a heat lamp.