Jennifer Giambruno, Jennifer Spash and Theadora Welch will sign copies of "The Sweet Dreams Kiss" from noon to 4 p.m. today at North Country Cultural Center for the Arts, 23 Brinkerhoff St., Plattsburgh. Books available for $8.95. Donations to the Center for the Arts welcome.
PLATTSBURGH — When Theadora speaks, her mom listens.
Jennifer Giambruno has kept a record of her 6-year-old's more memorable observations ever since the child first began stringing words together.
She keeps a notebook handy upstairs, one downstairs. Another in Giambruno's purse gives quick access when Theadora Welch says something cute or clever, funny or fantastic in the car.
"I've pulled over and jotted things down," Giambruno said.
QUOTABLE QUOTES
Capturing Theadora's words from an early age ensures fulfillment of a mother's nostalgic hunger when her little girl grows up — and maybe some "Oh, Mom!" moments, too.
But it's more than that, said Giambruno, who teaches 10th-grade English and an occasional creative-writing class at Peru Central School.
"It can build a connection between the parent and child," she said. "It's a relationship builder."
When Theadora was just 2 — and barely beginning to advance beyond baby babble — Giambruno would rock her before bedtime and say, "Let's talk about your day."
Of course, it was Mom who did the talking, recounting for her toddler what had happened in her little world, one event at a time.
"She'd go, "Mo-wha," Giambruno articulated her daughter's early word for "more."
And the routine seemed to prepare Theadora for sleep.
"It just kind of settled everything for her," Giambruno said.
It wasn't long before Theadora began contributing her share to the conversation. And Giambruno began collecting her daughter's quotable quotes. As Theadora got older, she realized what was going on.
The child will make a remark, her mother said, "then she'll go, 'Are you going to write that down?'"
That knowledge — that Mom cherishes her words enough to preserve them — is all the more reason to keep her notebooks at the ready.
"She knows she's valued," Giambruno said. "And she also understands the power of her words."
And because Theadora's mother is always ready to capture yet another quip, Giambruno said, "she's been more than willing ... to stretch herself."
FLOATING WISHES
Always the teacher, Giambruno had, in the back of her mind, mulled over how to take that lesson to the next level. It was a school project that solidified that for her.
Local author/illustrator team Tamia Gastio and Jan Stanley paired up Giambruno's 10th-graders with art students taught by Lynn Manning to make their own childrens books. A manuscript jelling in her own mind, Giambruno invited art student Jennifer Spash, then 15, to work with her.
The storybook "The Sweet Dreams Kiss," which Giambruno self-published through Heritage Printing in Plattsburgh, had its genesis in a nighttime ritual.
"Will you give me a sweet-dreams kiss?" Theadora had begun asking her.
From her notebooks, Giambruno chose some of her daughter's past fancies as the dreams that kiss created.
"Some of the things she says have a dreamlike quality," she said.
A balloon had escaped Theadora's grasp one day, and Giambruno quickly told her to make a wish.
"Look, Mommy," the child said, "my wishes are floating all the way up to the sky."
In the book, Theadora floats in the air with wish-filled balloons.
On another, a tiny Theadora dances with giant princesses.
"Probably the pink one's name is Sara," said Theadora, holding her special stuffed bear Oso. "The blue one's name is Star, because she likes to be a star on the stage."
"That's the kind of thing I write down," her mother said, laughing.
For the dream about swimming with squiggly, wiggly jellyfish, Spash had drawn Theadora wearing scuba gear. But Giambruno asked her to leave that real-world necessity out.
"The whole point of a dream is to do something impossible," she said.
A WAY TO RELATE
In some ways, the project challenged her, put in Spash.
"You have to think about how a little kid would think."
Theadora likes being the star of "The Sweet Dreams Kiss" because, she said, "it's cool."
And it's another self-esteem builder, her mother said.
At a North Country Cultural Center of the Arts event, the Bailey Avenue School first-grader autographed some of the books and handled the cash transaction for sales.
"I could just see her glowing after she'd done that," Giambruno said.
A story doesn't have to be published, though, to make a child feel special. She was thrilled when Theadora, on her own, made a book for her grandparents about cyclops.
And sometimes turning a routine question like "How was your day?" into a story can encourage a child to expand upon a one-word answer, Giambruno said, setting free description and emotion that might otherwise remain unsaid.
"If I can pretend to be someone, it's a safe way to explore and to relate," she said. "It really does all start with language."
E-mail Suzanne Moore at: smoore@pressrepublican.com
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