Father Seahorse What Do You See.....

Mister Seahorse (Hardcover)
by Eric Carle

I've just finished teaching a four week summer school in 1st grade with Migrant children in CA. My children were such an opportunity for me and so delightful and calm. They were taught in English this summer with the intent they have another opportunity in the Migrant program to work on their oral language skills, an extra boost if you will.

Many attended all year (since Kindergarten) "Saturday School" within this migrant classification giving their Saturdays as well as their week to further language learning. Many do not know how hard a migrant child actually does work here in CA to become a fluent speaker of English.
Many truly stupid misperceptions exist around this Migrant program as well. It has been a veritable life saver in Ventura County under the long leadership of a man of great personal integrity. Good work takes leadership, good work isn't mandated or ordered by Congress in legislation. It is found in the heart of a man. And it is found within their willingness to make their place in this world a bit better. And I mention this because what I did this summer was be privileged to serve under the Migrant umbrella in county, and work in a program that assists children whose parents serve us in agriculture moving for jobs as the worker. I worked in Migrant Summer School with Irma Villanueva as my awesome Principal and under the umbrella that Dr. Joe Mendoza has placed in Ventura County CA. He is.....a fine man.

But I know the value of leadership, how it changes everything.
I see it within my days and Migrant Education in Ventura County under Joe Mendoza has changed lives, it gave excellent returns for the Federal Funds that many would remove even as I blog. I know the children well and see the results. Just today Joe sent to each child in my room as a goodbye three books each, worth at least $25.00 and all dedicated to science. It was a gift that made me cry. The books were exactly what i might want for my children. Content rich, full of knowledge. and so exciting we read some in the wonder a good book brings. How do I thank him. By working harder. This is what joe does. He inspires integrity.

Joe knows. He "gets" it. I raise this because this is exactly the kind of role that is talked about in Mr. Seahorse, by Eric Carle a man giving to first his family, then his community, doing what he can in his way, his service in the peaceful daily betterment of our world.

This is the theme one finds at the heart of this Carle work. Protection, civility, service and how one will interact within your sphere be it reef or school. It is a book about the life we lead, model we set, and the way of living. When buying it, you are buying into comparisons such as the one I just sited. As we go forth, who are we? What way will we choose to act? And what is the most important thing we must do? If you understand Eric Carle at all, you know he is telling you, " Teach the children well....they are our future."

Very few of my children this summer could tell me all they wanted to communicate in words ( I was asked to remain within speaking English and I did so) but they are at this very important and beautiful listening stage. Exhausting though it can be.
This means they do understand above what they might produce. It is a stage for patterns, simple songs, poems, for finding ways with predictability in reading books for them to carry what they know into oral expression. I embedded my work in literature pieces, art projects and lessons related to the water cycle, food webs, our oceans, into my love of tropical reefs, animals. From what we know about learning a second language, and what I've learned teaching in 25 years, it does help to embed students in a meaningful context. It is VERY hard for children to suspend meaning making as phonics approaches require as we get a hut for Zig Bug or say cat/hat rhymes with Goat groat stories that are now dominating the landscape of our reading from the wars waged by those who only know what they know.

I selected this book on Mr. Seahorse and this theme this summer specifically based on our CA Standards and goals for 1st grade. One of the most hilarious aspects of our times now teaching children in poverty schools is the focus is so narrowed into basic phonics and drilling sounds skills children are not then allowed meaning, literature, arts, music, science the very things they need to be exposed to, read, make and do and often the very things that carry the content that needs to be delivered. An impoverishment of even greater potential damage than that of the material resources lack in the parents. This is a removal of equity and opportunity by the very system that is proporting to hold that value as tantamount.

AND I simply took a stand supported by my leadership and county figure and chose to work in science and art specifically because teachers over and over have shared "they don't do that now" or anymore. Such foolishness begins a cycle of true poverty. Poverty of mind and a kind of lower class is once again born. And this is a systematic crime.

I say all of this to talk about this book by Eric Carle . His book deserves to be contextualized in the actual place his work has claimed. He was a pioneer in the work with children's literacy. And he remains true to the importance of this field. Because it was the 1st book I used with the children this summer, and I read it several times at their request, I gained a real respect for what it was created to do by a master maker. What makes his books particularly helpful are the rythmns and repetitions he places there, the predictablity and the variation. But it is constructed within the context of his mastery of the form. Clearly early on Carle understood that children learning to read, or learning to listen to a book or for that matter learning a book in a second language, children at a certain stage developmentally go through a time when they find the patterns and variations a kind of cylcling loop that is reassuring and delightful. Predict, check your prediction. the basis of science, no?

I watch actually this year after year in my 1st grade instruction through Carle's books. His work often form the backbone of pulling my 2nd language learners into nouns(for often it is the noun he varies) or through color words, lists of feelings, days, months or some particular piece of category of knowledge and vocabulary, some concept that my school now calls for teaching in an "explicit, discreete way". While true it must be taught to the learner specifically, the "explicit" label has moved teachers to using big word banks on focusing walls and workbook forms, chanting and pointing, or within instruction purchased in that form over pieces of literature such as this which do embed the lesson much more creatively within a visual and artistic frame. And this is done, this 'explicit' directed instruction at the cost of understanding, contextualizing, losing the art of life. It is the biggest loss I know for children short of simply closing their schools.

It's small stuff reading orally to our kids, but removal of these key literature opportunities for children in poverty are the kinds of results that these politically driven test based agendas have achieved. Intended or not we see Brown Bear and the ability to find Mr. Seahorse used in lessons going away for dull phonics based materials that are not addressing the cadence of language or the needs of real kids. And we are losing the importance of saying as teachers we truly need authors with , if you will, some class.

Class Carle has.

Sometimes as I consider talking about a book, I'm asked to get to the point.
Okay. What happens in this book, Mr. Seahorse, is an interesting juxtaposition of a couple patterns and ideas. I sat down as I first shared it and explored this with the children.
On the one hand you have various fish that guard and parent their young ones. You meet them.

(Mr. Seahorse drifts gently through the sea, meeting five other fish fathers who participate in prenatal care: Mr. Stickleback hatches the eggs; Mr. Tilapia holds the eggs in his mouth; Mr. Kurtus, a nurseryfish, sticks the eggs on his head until they hatch; Mr. Pipe, a pipefish, carries the eggs on his narrow belly; and Mr. Bullhead, a catfish, babysits newly hatched fry. With each encounter comes a delightful surprise: an acetate overlay camouflages the sea creatures as Mister Seahorse passes by: a lionfish hides in a coral reef; a stonefish hides behind a rock.)

It's a survival mechanism this "care" that allows the young a better opportunity at survival. One thing I found teaching, and as I am starting my summer aquarium and looking at that learning, reading and thinking about the way of survival in nature, children enjoy these lessons.
The young often do not survive. And animals have a variety of ways of addressing that.
They young may be the food for another species, so hiding, over bearing, or something as amazing as the seahorse father placing the young within his pouch or the young in the mouth...these kinds of survival strategies evolved to aid survival of a species.
And each time Mr. Seahorse passes another parent and off-spring the "protection" feature is gently reinforced.

In our classroom follow-up discussion of the book eventually one of my children, one with very limited English noted to us, "Dads do keep us safe."
My son who is going through a bout of fearful dreaming reaches out for his father in an age old grasp for the protector role. We know this, you know this. I know this. I think my class took that in on some level, a very deep level. It may be a traditional role, it maybe archetypal, but it is a gentle back story within this text, as indeed at the end of the text it is the father gently suggesting the time to leave this seahorse pouch to find a way in the ocean of life. Growing up. Time to move on into your next steps.

In my home and in many families the father does serve to initiate the connection to the world for the child. I think of father as "acting on" and it is something I respect beyond words.
This part of the book, father as protector and as a way into the thoughts and activities of the world, this is there in a very natural and gentle reminder of the patterns and truth we humans know. This is placed against the pair of seahorses traveling the reef greeting various hiding or camouflaged animals.

That's very exciting stuff for a child, familiar, safe and yet promising future, growth, and think we change. He also used these clear plastic overlays to "hide" these fish. Kids love that lifting and revealing. A piece of fun. And this piece relates another kind of animal defense, hiding is addressed. But what I found so brilliant was again Carle is speaking to the father as he takes the seahorse into the ocean reef introducing the neighbors.
Greeting, politeness and going out to see the wider world. A role here of paternity.

This was a great piece to start my summer program to set a tone of courtesy and curiosity.

Today my daughter who is 17 noted to me that in her interactions she strives to be amenable and liked. It would be my contention that Carle is teaching this within these pieces. He is teaching civility. And he is, again in my opinion, talking to the nature of interrelation. We can strive to model and live as we believe and as we know.

Because Carle is a very conscious, considered, trained and developed artist maker of works for children, it should come as no surprise that in a book some call a "gimick", one finds the basis for teaching social and familial kinds of politeness, trust, concern, the roles of parents/protectors. He supports healthy child constructs like feeling protected, and he uses the reef and fish to dialog this as the vehicle for transfer looking at the variations in nature, encourages observation of animal behaviors, celebrates the natural world and its place as a teacher for us as humans. It is no surprise that his collage work is very rich here. He is a well-established artist maker now and the book reflects this.
To me he is saying...." I am the maker of works to bring happiness and multiple meanings to children, I celebrate their uniqueness, their interpretive abilities. But I am placing my talents, at the height of my adult abilities, here with the subtlety and care. My genius hidden and quieted so that I too, as in Mr. Seahorse, take great care with the journey through my book to lead these children through journey of meaning making and understanding what it is to be a human."

May Carle sit on your shelves, be read with and to your children (and grand children) and may he be celebrated as the American writer and creator that he is, a revolutionary force in understanding how children learn, celebrating their place in our world and respecting them as needing our adult time , effort and concern so they may develop self-respect and self-confidences and be supported in their journeys within our very human lives. As I often say, no one would be a better person to hold ones projections of the good father. He has modeled here for us the role with distinction.

A book for anyone to love.

seahorses in oklahoma, Hippocampus sp.
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Actinopterygii Order: Syngnathiformes Family: Syngnathidae Genus: Hippocampus Cuvier (1816)[1]

Seahorses (Hippocampus erectus) at the New England Aquarium.