Childhood fascination revisited!

There is a saying that an apple does not fall too far from the tree. But does it have to fall so close to the tree either? I can’t say that we are happy to have Abhay take after us because Abhay seems to have picked up each of our quirks or foibles as opposed to those traits that we are admittedly proud of! So he has got my husband’s worrying nature and his mother’s impatience or he has inherited his father’s poor interest in food (during childhood!) coupled with my fussy attitude towards its presentation! But off late, he seems to share even some of our childhood admirations, like my childhood crush on Michael Jackson. Of course, I am still a fan of Michael Jackson’s music, but I didn’t expect my six year to turn into a Michael Jackson aficionado so early in life. Abhay is fascinated by the King of Pop and he couldn’t contain his excitement when Discovery channel aired a documentary on the occasion of 25^th anniversary of his album BAD, a couple of weeks ago. I was quite amused to find my little one groove to Michael Jackson numbers like “Beat it” or “The way you make me feel” or “Dangerous” as they transport me back to my teens! But the flipside to this obsession is that there is no other music but only Michael Jackson playing on our car stereo nonstop for the last four months, and believe me this will tire even the most fervent Michael Jackson fan ever!

Abhay has also been curious about the Michael Jackson story, about how it all began and the mystery surrounding his death and so imagine my delight as I stumbled upon “Michael Jackson at a glance"at Sapna book house! Abhay couldn’t believe his eyes as he saw what I was about to read to him! A part of "At a glance" series of knowledge books about famous personalities brought out by oyster publications. Other books in this series are on " J.K.Rowling", "Sachin Tendulkar", Barack Obama, etc. though not a full fledged biography, these books provide a brief introduction to the making of the legend and their principal acheivements, just about enough for a six year old. For instance, Abhay learnt that Michael Jackson formed a music group along with his four elder brothers called Jackson 5 in 1964 which went on to record a number of hits. Abhay now knows that Michael started his solo career with "Off the Wall" and there was no looking back ever since. I felt the series fell a tad short of "a glance" and needed some more details about the superstar singer. As far as illustrations go, I prefer actual images as opposed to the look-alike sketches. However, considering the short attention span of children for non-fiction, this is a good start.  So if you have a little MJ fan at home, treat him to "Michael Jackson at a glance"! :-)