Sarcasm sometimes reigns in the comment, “Oh, he just wanted to get caught.” And there is the two-year-old who can’t stay hidden long enough to be found in hide-and-seek, or the second grader who commits a blatant minor infraction so he will be kept in for recess out of the Mississippi heat. Or there is me, trying very hard for notice in this “Get Caught Reading Month.” Getting caught sometimes has its perks. The “too late” part? Not so much.
I must admit to an ulterior motive as I worked on this post. I found out about this special month from the Eerdman’s Books for Young Readers blog with their book people getting caught reading some interesting books. My motive is their offer for those who post about this celebration on social media to enter into a drawing for eight (8!) books. Mister H, Just for Today, Red, Roger Is Reading a Book, Edgar Wants to Be Alone, Animal Supermarket, The Yes, and The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch.
All eight books appeared to be good reads and would look fine on my bookshelf after I finished reading. A couple in particular intrigued me. The copy of The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch signed by both author and illustrator, which I’m reading in the picture, will remain with me only until it becomes a gift for a couple of red-headed brothers. That surely calls for a copy of my own to replace it. Then there is the intriguing resemblance on the cover of Roger Is Reading a Book to Roger Sutton, editor in chief of The Horn Book Magazine. Hmmmm.
The “Too Late” part comes with a moral for this story which I found as I looked for the website to include for my blog readers. Not paying close enough attention to the instructions can be the end of hope for contest winners as well as writers. You can see the instructions (and my mistake) yourself by clicking on the picture of the stack of books, along with some of the “caught reading” pictures, at www.eerdlings.com.
Since this is the month for being caught reading, my assumption that it ran to the end of the month would have been better served by reading all the information carefully – like the one that says the contest closes at midnight on May 20. Why do I feel a bit like a hare who took a little snooze unaware that a tortoise was passing him by?