Hello, everyone! Welcome to Story Time with The Met. My name is Chloe and I'm
so excited to be here with you today to read a story and sing songs. We hope you'll join
us every Thursday at noon for a new story. Now before we get started let's find a comfy spot,
get ready, and we're gonna sing our Story Time song all together on the count of three.
Can you hold up three fingers? Okay, ready one, two, three! Welcome friends, get ready,
get set for Story Time with The Met where we love to read and sing and look at works of art
and picture books! We'll use our eyes to look and see. We'll use our ears to hear stories. Now we'll
take a seat and give a "shhh!" Let's begin with our first book. Yay! Round of applause, friends!
You did such a great job singing our song. I love when we can sing our Story Time song together.
This week's book is a very special one called A Different Pond written by Bao Phi and illustrated
by Thi Bui. What can we see on the cover? You see a child and a man holding a fishing rod
and they're standing by a big pond at night and you can see the big moon and all of the stars
around. I'm gonna read the words and I'm gonna need your help looking at the pictures.
A Different Pond
Dad wakes me quietly so mom can keep sleeping. It will be hours before the sun comes up.
Do you see the little boy waking? He's so tired! I get tired in the morning, too.
In the kitchen the bare bulb is burning. Dad has been up for a while,
making sandwiches and packing the car. You see this yellow picture has them in the kitchen.
"Can I help?" I ask. "Sure," my dad whispers and he hands me the tackle box.
The street lights look brighter and the roads aren't so busy before the sun comes up. Dad turns
on the heater and tells me stories. Have you ever ridden in a car when it's dark outside and empty?
A kid at my school said my dad's English sounds like a thick, dirty river.
But to me his English sounds like gentle rain.
We stop at the bait store on Lake Street. It always seems to be
open. Here they are going into the bait shop.
"You're here early," the bait man says. "I got a second job," my dad
explains. "I have to work this morning."
"On a saturday?" the bait man asks. My dad nods. Here's the dad and the bait man.
I feel the bag of minnows move. They swim like silver arrows in my hands.
And you see our main character holding a bag of minnows. Minnows are tiny fish that are used
to bait other fish when you go fishing; they feel all squiggly and move around really fast!
It's still dark when we get to the pond.
We park the car and climb over the divider between the road and the trees. See how dark it is?
Here's where they're parking and they're gonna climb all the way down here.
My dad holds my hand and walks ahead through the tangle and scrub. "Step where I step," he says.
I'm thinking about what dad told the bait man. "If you got another job why do we still
have to fish for food?" I ask. "Everything in America costs a lot of money," he explains.
I feel his callouses the callouses on his hand when he squeezes mine. And here
is our father and son going down to the pond to fish.
Sometimes a Hmong man is at the pond. He speaks English like my dad and likes to tell funny jokes.
See? Right here. Sometimes there's a black man there, too. He shows me his colorful
lure collection. You see his lures? A lure is another thing that's used to catch fish.
This time it's just me and my dad. It's a little bit cold. I rub my hands together,
yawn, and look up to see faint stars like freckles. Do you see
all of the stars here? It's still so dark and it's just the two of them.
As Dad sets up a clearing, I gather small, thin twigs for a fire.
They need to be dry and clean. And here he is picking up twigs for his fire.
I count- let's count together! We're about to count some sticks-
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and then 10 more for later
so we have 10 plus 10 is 20. 20 sticks! I put some rocks in a circle and set up the twigs.
"Like a volcano," my Dad reminds me. I set up one end of each twig down, and the other up,
leaning them in so that they rest up against each other and hold each other up.
I get it to light with just one match. Dad nods. Do you see his volcano that he's making?
That's how he's making his fire out of all of his dry clean twigs.
"Do you want to put a minnow on the hook" Dad asks. I want to help, but I shake my head no.
I don't want to hurt that little fish even if I know it's about to be eaten by a bigger one.
So these are the minnows that our friend was holding in the bag earlier and his dad is putting
it on to a hook for the fish. Can you shake your head no? That's what our friend is doing.
My dad smiles. He isn't upset with me. And you see that his dad has his fishing rod all ready to go!
Dad hands me a sandwich, cold bologna between two pieces of bread. "Careful of the spicy stuff," he
said. There's a half a peppercorn, like a moon split in two, studded into the meat.
You can see they're eating their sandwiches by the pond
and there's our friend's little fire and all of his sticks left over for later.
"I used to fish by a pond like this when I was a boy in Vietnam,"
said Dad, biting into a sandwich. "With your brother?" I ask.
He nods and then looks away. Dad tells me about the war but only sometimes.
He and his brother fought side by side. One day his brother did not come home.
The bobber dips into the dark and Dad pulls. "Got one!" he says, almost shouting. A crappie!
And soon another. "Can I help?" See there is his little bobber and we're about to pull our fish out
of the water. He knots and I use two hands to help guide the fish into the bucket. The fish
feels slimy and rough at the same time. Dad laughs at the funny face that i make. What face would
you make if you were holding a fish? Mine would look something like this. They're really slimy!
Dad smiles, his teeth broken and white in the dark, because we have a few fish and he knows
we will eat tonight. Time to go home. Dad must get ready for work. He washes his hands with a small
nub of green and white soap. Then I do the same. They're washing their hands here in the pond.
I look at the trees and walk back to the car. I wonder what the trees look
like at the other pond, in the country that my dad comes from.
By the time we get home, the sunlight the sunlight coming through the windows is just a faint tint,
blue and gray instead of gold.
At home Mom looks tired, but she smiles at the big fish in the big white bucket.
My dad changes clothes and gets ready for work. Here he is getting ready for work. He pats me
on the back and says to Mom, "Our boy did a good job with the fire today!" "You learned
so quickly!" says Mom. Then she asks me to help with the fish before she has to go to work, too.
I'm sad that she and Dad must leave, but not too sad. I know that they will both come home later.
"Look after your baby brother," Mom says. I know she means me then she gets on her
bike and goes to work. I am not a baby, I think to myself. I helped catch dinner.
Tonight, when we are all home, Dad will put rice in the cooker, and Mom will fry the fish on both
sides until they are crispy. I will bring out the jar of fish sauce that has flecks of chili pepper
and carrots floating on top. At the table, my brothers and sisters will tell funny stories.
Mom will ask about their homework. Dad will smile and nod and eat with his eyes half closed.
"Good fish," he will say to me. See, here's our character and his dad and
his whole family eating the fish they caught earlier that morning.
And I will smile and nod and later, when we sleep, we will dream of fish in far away ponds.
The end. Thank you so much for reading that story with me. You all give yourselves a round of
applause. When I was reading this book, I thought about all the times that I would go fishing with
my grandfather when I was growing up. I was also really scared of the minnows so I really
related to this character! I was also inspired to think about some of the works of art in The Met's
collection. One work of art in particular is a 16th-century Chinese jar that shows carp, which
is a type of fish, in a lotus pond. In this jar, you see all these two brightly colored golden fish
among lots of seaweed and lotus flowers and I just think it's really beautiful! It makes me think
about what our character's dad's pond may have looked like and the fish they may have
seen together and all of the different things that we can see in the world.
Before we head off for today, I have a very quick activity that you can do with your grown-up
and all you'll you'll need a clear container and some paint. You can also use collage materials, if
you like. But I used paint and I was inspired by our jar so i took a plastic flower pot that I had
and I painted my own little pond. I have two goldfish and lots of bubbles
and some seagrass seaweed at the bottom and you can fill your jar with pebbles or with colored
paper to make it look like the sea or you can fill it with water to make it look like a little pond.
So this is my own tiny pond that I'll keep with me! Thank you all so much for joining
us today. I hope we'll see you again next Thursday. Until then, have a great week! Bye!