God only knows what I did to deserve this, but both of my kids love books. We read a lot together, and in addition to being heartwarming as hell, it reassures me that those incessant '80s literacy commercials were not in vain. "See, Captain OG Readmore, anthropomorphic puppet cat? I'm still reading! I DIDN'T LET YOU DOWN, GOOD SIR!" is an actual thing I have occasionally thought. And said out loud to my husband. And -- upon seeing his confusion and possible alarm -- sighed, exasperatedly trying to convince him that the good captain was NOT an imaginary friend, but a real (well, cartoon?), reading-obsessed and possibly drunk cat in maritime getup. ("Books were his catnip, J! DON'T YOU SEE?") Very little about the situation made sense, but damned if he wasn't real, is what I'm saying.
I was reading Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus to the kids on Sunday, and my friend -- who was visiting -- gave me a look of surprise. "That is NOT how the pigeon sounds," she said. "My pigeon voice is much more squeaky." I had never really thought about this before; in my mind the pigeon voice just IS, and what it is, it seems, is a Joe Pesci/Gilbert Gottfried hybrid.
I then had a Usual Suspects moment, reeling around at the bookshelf, as it hit me: I have unwittingly assigned extremely specific and distinct celebrity (and "celebrity") voices to the main characters in pretty much every single book I read to my kids: Pinkalicious, for instance, sounds like Snooki, Sam I Am of Green Eggs and Ham fame sounds like Jon Lovitz, and his unnamed counterpart, like Mr. Snuffleupagus. Amelia Bedelia is Carol Kane, in anything. The Caps for Sale peddler is Al Pacino in Scarface. And the little boy in The Giving Tree sounds like whatever an awful, terrible sociopath-in-training sounds like, because that is exactly what he is. (Stop making me read that book, kids! It is the worst!)
I'm fervently hoping this practice is a lot more common than I suspect it to be. Feel free to reassure me. If you need me, I'll be over here, reading The Berenstain Bears, and making Mama Bear sound like Jackée from 227 (a la Jen Haley). And -- if we're being honest -- watching old Captain OG Readmore clips.
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13 comments:
The character specific voices definitely helped keep the repetitious reading tolerable. Sadly, my children did not maintain their love of reading into adulthood, unless you count Deadspin and Yahoosports as reading.
"Hi I'm Captain OG Readmore." I remember this like it was yesterday!
At my school, we had this program called "Book It!" sponsored by our local Pizza Hut. And if you read 5 books, you earned a kid-size pizza. I've been hooked on reading ever since. And deep-dish pepperoni pizza...hmm, that campaign probably wouldn't fly these days.
Ooh, we have Snuffleupagus in my house too, playing the Lorax. Sam I Am, though, sounds like PeeWee Herman, which is very disturbing. (His counterpart has a British accent. I believe he's played by The Nanny.)
Captain OG Readmore....I really disliked him, probably because my brother, who didn't like reading, ran around all the time pretending he was the dear Captain.
Also, don't tell my girls that you can give the characters in stories different voices than your own as I never did that because once I tried and I couldn't get the voice exactly right from one reading of whatever book it was to the next and was called out by my then 2 year old.
I'm just terrible at voices, but I certainly try.
Also, I loved the Good Captain. Do you remember the specials? My favorite was Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I think maybe you should start recording yourself reading children's books. This could be a new lucrative career for you.
In our house Mama and Papa are from Brooklyn.
Speaking of weird character voices, is it just me or does Dora's abuela sound like a tranny on the show?
So that image of O.G. Readmore looks familiar, but I would have NEVER remembered his name.
Pinkalicious. Man, Skyler LOVES Pinkalicious.
Have you seen "The Taking Tree" on the cartoon The Grim adventures of billy and mandy? It's awesome, especially if you're horrified for that poor tree.
See, my son has kicked me off of book reading duty because my voices suck compared to the papa's voices. I thought I was really awesome at the voices. This has destroyed a pretty little dream of mine to be a voice-over artist....
And a previous commenter wrote about Book-It, and we had that program, too! Trying to bribe us to read by shoving greasy pizza down our innocent throats. Go government reading programs!
Mo Willems has a website, and there you can hear the Pigeon speak (in a surprising but completely fitting baritone, imo)!
I am just now working on, and i am sure this will help me a lot..and I have been looking for such information since from few days
There is one line in this Seseme Street Halloween book: "Oh look! It's pumpkin pie!" and for the life of me I can NOT say it in any other voice other than Cartman. I've tried. It does not work.
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