Blue Books

Just writing those two words gives me heart palpitations. It has been nearly 5 years since I opened a blue book, madly wrote in it for the hour or hours allotted, then slammed it shut, turned it in and felt relief like a storm cloud moving east and leaving behind the remnants of a sunset. I don't miss them. But they happened, and we did what we needed to do, and then our work was done. Or should I say, our own work? Of course it is important to do our individual work in the blue books. In college we even signed a pledge at the end of the book that we did our own work without the assistance of notes or other students.

Tonight Dietrich picked out a book about trains -- not the one called Railways (it has too many old trains in it) and not the one called Freight Trains (it was right here with the book Elliott picked, and that would be too easy), but the one "that is just like this but not exactly like it about freight trains with the symbol of the little blue engine that could on the cover" -- that book about trains. Once we found it and started reading, it sounded familiar. A quick cross reference with the other book on the bed showed that the words were the same, nearly exactly, as those in Freight Train. Granted, there may be only so much that can be said about trains using simple language. But the same phrases? Nearly the same images (though one had pictures and the other illustrations)? I wasn't thinking so much about plagiarism as I was thinking, couldn't we come up with something more? Where are the kids in these books? What about different perspectives (images of trains from the clouds, from space!)? The life of a grain from stalk to hopper car? I've read a children's book featuring dust bunnies and the vacuum cleaner -- surely we can do more with the fascination of kids and trains? Until then, just know that the hopper car carries loose items and is filled from above and emptied from below.