![]() When their mother caught a fish, the children would run to the well to fetch water to make it into soup. The two children loved to accompany their mother to the shore, and play all day in the sands of the beach. Their father works far off in the city, constructing tall buildings. The mother hunts and fishes and makes beautiful clothing for her children. The house is small but beautiful, and runs on its own - solar panels to power the house, and a deep well for all the fresh water they need. Their mother was an industrious and clever woman who built their home close to the shores of the beach. The two lived very happily on the beaches of Bali. The oldest was a boy named Tikki Tikki Tembo-No Sa Rembo-Chari Bari Ruchi-Pip Peri Pembo, and the youngest was a girl named Tina. Several nights in a row, if you can…įind these titles at your favorite local independent bookstore.Once upon a time, there was a family with two children. Perfect for kids ages three to seven, and best read aloud. Like many things, this is how we learn, and Tikki Tikki Tembo is a good book for just that. It’s so much fun to conquer a difficult string of syllables (like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious), and then repeat them over and over and over again. Regardless of the injustice (and resulting adjustment), Tikki Tikki Tembo is always a hit with kids. Perhaps brevity (and equality) is the way to go – childhood is complicated enough without the added burden of tongue-twisting birthright issues to overcome. It’s a close call, but he survives, and the ancient custom of naming firstborn children such elaborate names is revisited. Communicating the dire circumstances of a child with an extremely long name takes much more time, and as a result, precious moments are wasted in his rescue. ![]() The second slip happens with the older boy, so this time his younger brother is tasked with fetching help. ![]() If you guessed that the young boys did not learn their lesson the first time, you’d be correct. “Step over step over step over step” the man heads down, and “step over step over step over step” he heads back up with the little boy in his arms. First the younger son takes a tumble, leaving his brother to find help from his fairly nonchalant mother, and then from an older gentleman in the village with a ladder. Each day the children play around a dangerous object (in the case of this story, a well), and despite being warned of the danger by their mother, they fall in. Like fables do, there are lessons to be learned. The mother’s first born son is named Tikki Tikki Tembo-no Sa Rembo-chari Bari Ruchi-pip Peri Pembo, which (for the story’s purpose only) means “Most Wonderful Thing in the Whole Wide World”, while the younger son has a monosyllabic name that (unjustly) means “little or nothing”. The injustice of this fable is not lost on my own little one. The story is based on an invented Chinese custom whereby children are named in certain ways based on their birth order. Tikki Tikki Tembo, retold by Arlene Mosel and illustrated by Blair Lent, is one of those books. Occasionally it gets a bit predictable and tiresome for the reader, but repetition is a valuable early reading tool, particularly in texts that already have a repetitive structure. Rut actually has a negative connotation, but I don’t really think this sort of nightly repetition is a bad thing. Both my girls often get into reading ruts.
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