As I opened the book, a tiger attached to a boy with spiky blond hair bounced off the page, greeting me and the second grader sitting on the floor next to me. My finger touched the blank space right below the type, prompting Sawyer, my “Little Buddy,” to breathe the words on the page. He managed to choppily enunciate the words he saw, but the toothy smile he gave me when he was done reading the comic displayed a much deeper understanding than his initial speech had indicated.
Quickly, I became the Hobbes to his Calvin as our world transformed into the one on the page. No longer was Sparky the Dragon just a stuffed animal on a library shelf, but he was a monster that we had to escape from, like Spaceman Spiff evading the alien blob version of Miss Wormwood in his Sunday comic appearances. Every time the sound of my high-pitched rendition of Susie Derkins entered his ears, Sawyer perfectly mimicked Calvin’s disgust (no, it wasn’t just because hearing me speak in a …show more content…
The weekly adventures of Alex and Sawyer quickly morphed from a summer volunteering opportunity to a bond existing in the worlds of fiction and reality. The fictional world was opened to me when I was Sawyer’s age, merely an elementary schooler who loved reading with his mom. When we first read a Calvin and Hobbes collection together, I was amazed by the exploits of a boy my age and his stuffed tiger who came to life only for him. I imagined my own stuffed orange cat (cleverly nicknamed Sandy Cat by yours truly) as my version of Hobbes, and in my dreams, he came alive too. I saw the same wide-eyed look in Sawyer that I first had when I was introduced to Calvin and Hobbes, and that connection allowed us to build a friendship that improved upon itself week after week. Our shared love for Calvin and Hobbes made us an unstoppable reading duo as
Quickly, I became the Hobbes to his Calvin as our world transformed into the one on the page. No longer was Sparky the Dragon just a stuffed animal on a library shelf, but he was a monster that we had to escape from, like Spaceman Spiff evading the alien blob version of Miss Wormwood in his Sunday comic appearances. Every time the sound of my high-pitched rendition of Susie Derkins entered his ears, Sawyer perfectly mimicked Calvin’s disgust (no, it wasn’t just because hearing me speak in a …show more content…
The weekly adventures of Alex and Sawyer quickly morphed from a summer volunteering opportunity to a bond existing in the worlds of fiction and reality. The fictional world was opened to me when I was Sawyer’s age, merely an elementary schooler who loved reading with his mom. When we first read a Calvin and Hobbes collection together, I was amazed by the exploits of a boy my age and his stuffed tiger who came to life only for him. I imagined my own stuffed orange cat (cleverly nicknamed Sandy Cat by yours truly) as my version of Hobbes, and in my dreams, he came alive too. I saw the same wide-eyed look in Sawyer that I first had when I was introduced to Calvin and Hobbes, and that connection allowed us to build a friendship that improved upon itself week after week. Our shared love for Calvin and Hobbes made us an unstoppable reading duo as