When You Were Small

Sara O'Leary's charming When You Were Small is about a father telling his son Henry stories of when the boy was small....literally. Supposedly, the boy, in his younger days was the size of Tom Thumb who has many interesting happenings because of his size. Each incident is illustrated and described in a few sentences that start with "When you were small..." My favorite one is of how supposedly Henry used to ride inside his father's shirt pockets and ended up ripping up many of his dad's shirts that way. At the end, Henry asks his dad if everything's true and the dad replies, "Well, don't you remember?"

I love this book on many levels. It's short and makes a sweet bedtime story. It's stimulating to the imagination and think it would be great in an elementary classroom setting as a read aloud and then as a writer's prompt. It would be a fun assignment for students to write their own version of this book about how it would be to be Tom Thumb in modern times. The "When you were small..." format would also be easy for young writers to follow. This would also work in a "Small" themed book unit with other books like Tom Thumb, Thumbelina, and a recent new favorite Peter in Blueberry Land.

This book has sparked a new trend in our house. Almost every night after reading one book (I've finally pared down the number of books to one; the kids take turns picking their bedtime book) Koko and Cheeky will ask about how they were when they were young and then move on to ask me to share stories from my childhood.

Koko also loves to look at my baby album. She can now retell many of my stories just looking at the pictures. And recently, they were both so thrilled to listen to an old tape recording of my husband and his siblings singing and reading stories. My father also made a tape of my voice from infancy to three year old and it's interesting to listen to baby babbling sounds change to singing. My husband has started recording our children's voices secretly because kids prone to act unnaturally at the sight of a camcorder.

Fictitious and reconstructed stories from the past can be entertaining. But word to the wise: Be mindful of the stories you tell. Little ears are easily influenced. I told one story about how my brother used to eat soap and tissue and Cheeky had tissue in her mouth for days!