What a pleasure, after years of wrangling classes of 24 youngsters, to be a volunteer and sit down with just one.

Micah is one of my tutees, a little boy with big glasses and a busy mind and body. He would like to be standing on the chair, visiting the trash can repeatedly, calling out to friends across the room. It is no small feat to nudge him to just keep his eyes on the page. So for the read-aloud opening of our session I chose the action-packed book Rollercoaster by Marla Frazee. In it, you follow the little girl with the ponytail and red pants as she goes on her first rollercoaster ride, feeling all her feelings. You also have a nice variety of other characters in the car riding behind her and her dad, to amuse yourself seeing what they are doing and feeling.

Micah knew rollercoasters and while his eyes were traveling all over the room, it became apparent that he was paying close attention to the book. Only not the way the author intended.

First, he noticed the three big strong guys in line. “He’s got muscles, he’s gonna fight,” says Micah. So now he’s searching each page for a fight to break out.

Then the line of people get buckled in to the car of the rollercoaster. Micah is on high anxiety, and I figure out he is worried about the seatbelts. As he searches the picture for seatbelts he is not satisfied that they are sufficient, or that the attendant is fastening them properly. I try to reassure him that all our characters are safe.

Finally, Micah spots a charming little addition to the illustration on one page. A worker is eating his lunch, sitting high in the open struts of the rollercoaster. Micah is far from charmed. You might be thinking ahead to make a prediction here; yes, Micah is very worried that this man will fall. I point out black straps painted across his chest and reassure Micah again that he is also safe; no one will die today. Micah doesn’t trust me but he trusts his own mind as he decides, “Oh yeah, he’s got a parachute!”

Like a good teacher I persist in leading Micah back and back to the little girl in the ponytail and red pants. And he gets it. But he gets so much more, as his busy mind traverses the pages and makes his own interpretations. What to me is a fun picture book, to him is high drama containing real possibilities of death and disaster.

As a classroom teacher I always wanted to be a careful observer, analyst, researcher, of my students. Now I can do some of that, and I am so intrigued at these glimpses into this child’s mind, traveling at the speed of imagination. Perhaps anxiety. Should we call this attention deficit? I think there is a wonderful amount of attention being paid, just not what we expect.