I'm not sure exactly when I began "reading" books that didn't have illustrations on every page. I know that I was well out of the picture book phase the summer before I entered first grade. One day, my mom spent the better part of a morning in the library of my new school (we'd just moved to Lawrence, Kan., and I think she was registering me or some other such thing), and I filled that time by reading every single Encyclopedia Brown book on the shelf. I later learned that this obsessive book devouring kinda spooked the librarian. Looking back, I don't blame her a bit.

My son Max turned three a couple of months ago. He's begun "reading" certain books that he knows by heart...and somewhat more unnerving, he's now able to memorize library books after hearing them just once or twice. The only word I know he recognizes in print is his name, but I have a feeling he's holding back a bit. He prefers to spring his developmental leaps in full flower, not incrementally. My guess is that he's on the same reading schedule as me, which means that he'll really be reading by Christmas or so.

A couple weeks ago, Max pulled a heavy book off his shelf and asked me to read it. It was The Random House Book of Humor for Children, which features chapters from a number of well-known kids books, everything from How to Eat Fried Worms to Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, with some odds and ends thrown in. The piece I decided to read was from Beezus and Ramona--the final chapter, where Ramona bakes her doll Bendix (a name that might have seemed slightly subversive when the book was published back in the fifties, I imagine) as a way of re-enacting the climax of "Hansel and Gretel."

Max was so taken with the story that Barbara checked out Beezus and Ramona the next time she was at the library. And unlike our sporadic forays into the Pooh books (which are illustrated more than most books, but don't come close to qualifying as picture books), Max insisted we read the book all the way through. We did beg off, working through just one chapter at a time, but still, we finished the entire book in a couple days. Max apparently has developed the patience to listen to a story and see the pictures in his head.

It helps that the stories are funny, if rather dated. Beezus leaves Ramona alone in a park while she attends an art lesson. Beezus (who is nine) and her friend Henry Huggins freely wander the streets of Portland, Ore., as long as they get home by supper time. It's also amusing that the Quimbys rented their house--and that said house had just one bathroom--anachronisms that just don't fit in these days of "the ownership society" and monster homes. Of course, the bathroom detail didn't confuse Max in the slightest. We've only got one in our house.

What did cause some consternation was the treatment Ramona received at the hands of Beezus and her mother. In this book, Ramona is four. But she talked, acted and thought just like Max does now. In fact, her speech patterns were so similar to his that at times Barbara and I thought we were reading a transcript of an afternoon with Max.

And so, when Ramona was punished, Max would get upset--especially if she had broken a rule he already knew. He empathized with Ramona's various plights so much that at times we had to pause a minute or two so that he could cry with her. When Ramona became sad or angry, Max would occasionally say "That mommy isn't very nice"--a slight variation on a refrain he's been aiming at us with increasing frequency.

But Max also identified with Beezus, the older sister. He loves his little brother Sam, but he hates hearing Sam cry. And, not unlike Beezus, he can get mad at Sam from time to time, particularly when Sam isn't happy. So when Beezus learns that it's okay to be mad at Ramona, even to be so mad as to not love her from time to time, Max smiled his appreciation.

Still, his main interest was Ramona. Because it wasn't a picture book (each chapter had an initial illustration, but that was it), he could form his own picture of Ramona in his head. My guess is he thinks she looked a lot like him. And he seemed to take comfort in the fact that a little girl acted just like he does from time to time.

All those childrearing books tells us that when kids turn three is that they begin to come to terms with the realization that good people can do bad things. In particular, they learn that they are not "bad" if they do something bad, and that their "good" cherry has not been popped if they step out of line once. Up until now, once Max has started to misbehave, he simply ramps up the misbehavior until he becomes exhausted. The idea that he can control himself and stop being "bad" is a new one--one that the Ramona stories illustrate exceptionally well.

I'm under no illusions about Max's "reading." He still prefers picture books, and he won't be digging into War and Peace for quite a while yet. Nonetheless, it's interesting to watch his imagination grow by leaps and bounds. In the last month, he has begun to throw parties in his room for friends, pretending that they are at his house having a good time (eating cake, drinking iced tea and dancing to the Rosebuds and the Ramones). A full-blown imaginary friend or few is probably on the way. He's still a literal-minded little guy (as are most young children), but he's beginning to discover the joy of seeing things that are not real. And that sort of wonderment is what keeps Barbara and I from taking his head off when he decides to surf a monster half-pipe of bad behavior. It's all part of the process, I guess, even if we don't know exactly what the process really is.

Jon Worley still reads way too much.