Book Lover’s Story Is a Good Read

It’s hard to talk about favorites when there are so very many, with so many doors opening this way and that, leading you into worlds that you didn’t even know existed before, but Don Khoung, 8 years old, baseball cap stashed in his back pocket, Robocop watch on his wrist, gives it a try.

“Francis Scott Key,” he says, “because he wrote the national anthem when he was on a ship in the English fleet and watched all those explosions in the sky. Reading about it, it feels like somebody just sang it to you!”

Don is talking biographies right now, although he may be closer to singing about them himself, so exultant is his praise. His dark eyes are really sparkling, his smile almost a laugh.

He is particularly smitten with biographies at the moment--”because it’s kind of like true”--but this boy reads around. So far this summer, best estimate is that he’s read more than 100 books.

He is going into the third grade.

Last year Don maxed out early when his teacher offered a free pizza to every kid who read 14 books outside of class. The contest lasted five months, one pizza per. Don naturally won five.

So when I tell him what I’ve read lately in the news, that there’s a school district near Chicago taking some heat from parents for requiring students to read one book over summer break, Don takes his two index fingers and circles them near his ears. This means, “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”

“Boy, they should read 100 books!” Don says.

Some Illinois parents, however, see reading as an infringement on their children’s free time. They’ve been quoted as saying that during the summer especially, kids should have their minds “freed” to explore other things. They’ve said that reading one book over the summer would louse up vacation plans. They’ve said that reading is work.

These parents have got it all wrong.

Khai Khoung, Don’s father, says that he just doesn’t understand, and it is not a matter of the English words. Khai, who emigrated from Vietnam in 1981, reads in Vietnamese, French, English and sometimes, Chinese.

In Vietnam, his mother helped him, from the time he was very young, to savor the written word. “Arabian Nights” was one of his favorite books from back then.

“My mother tried to encourage me,” Khai says. “She would ask me what I know from the book. And she would tell the joke about a guy who cannot read. He goes to the intersection and he cannot read any of the signs. So he doesn’t know which way to go. He waits for somebody to come, and then he follows behind him. He just follows behind the big fellow the whole way. So I think I have to read myself.”

“Sesame Street,” Khai says, helped Don develop his own love of books. He reads in English, although he speaks Vietnamese at home. He was reading by the time he was 5.

Father and son stop by the public library here on Chapman Avenue in Garden Grove about four times a week. They’ve got the schedule down. Khai, who works as an electronics technician in Orange, picks up Don after work. Don’s mother, a pharmacist, brings her son when her husband cannot.

“I try to make him familiar with the library,” Khai says. “I enjoy reading. I think I give him a good habit, instead of going to the mall.”

Finding Don was as easy as picking up the phone. He is one of those kids that librarians love to point to, someone who has figured out early on that reading is something to come home to and something to take with you too. A love of reading lasts for life.

“He is one of my best readers,” children’s librarian Carol Ann Helsel says, patting Don on the back as she passes by. Don is explaining why.

“Well, it’s like you are in the book. You are the person that the book is talking about. You are there. When you watch TV, you see the picture, but you can’t go inside it. And TV, when you watch it, it’s noisy. It’s quiet with a book.”

Except Don says that a lot of kids at school haven’t caught on.

“Almost every kid in my class doesn’t like to read,” he says. “They say it’s kind of boring. I just tell them it’s kind of interesting . . . . Most of my friends, though, they like to read. So the boys that don’t like to read, usually they are not my friends.”

And it is as simple as that. You read, you learn, you have fun and you think for yourself. Reading is a habit worth cultivating. It leads to good things.

As Khai Khoung knows. He is very proud that I have chosen to talk with his son, only he doesn’t tell me that straight out.

“One more thing,” he says as I am about to leave. Don has gone off to browse, again, through the stacks of books. He has already picked out five.

“I escape from Vietnam, and thanks to the goodness of the American people, I able to make a living,” Khai says. “My son, I want to help him to grow up well and to help other people too.”

A hint of tears clouds Khai’s eyes now, and then he smiles. He asks would I mind waiting just a moment; he has his camera in the car. He would like a picture of Don with the people from the Los Angeles Times.

Now I am the one who feels very proud.