What To Read A Child For A Night?

Well ... "Hello, I'm your aunt!" ... came ... I never thought that I would be asked about it ... Immediately I remember the film "Operation" Y "and other adventures of Shurik." Do you remember how he fed the child porridge and slept in bed? That's it ... And I was horrified to imagine that something like this awaits me.

And the thing is that her sister had to go to another city urgently, she took her husband with her, all the relatives mysteriously disappeared and as a consequence, it was my fate to spend the whole evening messing around with a five-year-old fidget named Lena (let's say, A typhoon with two bows). "Well, that's it," the nurse exhorted, handing me a huge box of dolls, balls, plush hares and other horrible things. "The main thing is to make a mess on milk and go to bed no later than nine in the evening." "It's easy to say .." - I thought, and, looking at Lena with interest, looked at me, I realized that she thinks the same way.

Well nothing. After all, we have pedagogical education - we will manage somehow. I remembered lectures on the method of raising children of preschool age, but nothing to do with a five-year-old creature tied to the tail of my beloved cat bow, was not found.

An hour later, nothing seemed to remind me of the ideal order: I could not take a step to avoid stepping on any toy, a house was built from my books, where the cat was already "voluntarily and compulsorily" populated, already seemingly surrendered And resigned himself to his fate, and on the snow-white surface of the refrigerator, felt-tip pens of all possible colors, some kind of byaka was formed. Soon I already knew all the stuffed animals by their names, professionally swaddled the Katya doll, and in general I even liked the game of "daughter-mother".

Having played enough, I began to cook porridge. Thank God that on the packaging write "ways of cooking", otherwise already with the fourth attempt I would not have prepared for anything. Porridge, of course, turned out very tasty and, convincing in this doubting child, I myself wove a good half, while the "child" sentenced: "Another spoon ..".

Time was inexorably approaching by nine in the evening, to which I was unspeakably happy, anticipating a speedy silence and peace. And then the little Lena puzzled me again: it turned out that my mother reads fairy tales for her at night, so I must also read, otherwise she resolutely refuses to go to bed. In the box with toys, I found a couple of children's books, prudently put there by my sister.

So be it. A small miracle climbed into bed, I opened the book and ... the first phrase that caught my eye was: "... and in the morning Snow White died ...". Without a moment's hesitation, I slammed the book and took another. I found a fairy tale "About a cheerful shoemaker" (it seemed to me that in it no one was sure to "exhale") and began to read: "One day in the spring, in one small village all the children died ...". At first I was horrified at the way children are treated today by fairy tales. And then I realized that I do not have any other children's books and take no fairy tales from anywhere except from my memory (I did not dare to look on the Internet fearing to stumble upon the same "exhausted" Snow White). The only thing that came to my philological mind is ... the ancient Greek epic.

"Do you know the story of Tsar Odysseus?" I asked a five-year-old Lena, who was expecting, perhaps, another fairy tale about "Varis pot" or "How the hedgehog ran on grass".

- No. And who is this? - Lena became interested.

"Well then, listen." Once upon a time, there was a king on a distant island ...

The narrator is not important to me, and I never told a fairy tale before, but Lena listened, with bated breath, about all the adventures of Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus and other heroes of the Homeric epic. I myself was so carried away by history that I did not notice how the child fell asleep. Turning off the light and closing the door behind me, I went to my room to reread the Odyssey.

In the morning my sister came and took my daughter to send her to the kindergarten, and in the evening she called and, laughing, told me that the teacher was perplexed: where does the five-year-old girl know the heroes of ancient Greek literature so well, about which she herself learned only at the institute?