#the older newsies generally tend to gravitate over when someone starts a bedtime story for the littles

[crowned-ladybug]

I forgot I typed up all this a while ago. Have some thoughts re: Jack vs literacy

newsies in general can read bc i mean they kinda Have To. meaning Jack can read pretty alright as well

he starts struggling if text is longer than like two paragraphs bc at that point it gets tiring and easy to be distracted from. to counteract this and also just save time in general, he's really good at skimming front page/other interesting articles so that he actually knows what he's selling

there becomes One single exception to the skim-reading and that is Anything Katherine Writes, which can go one of two ways:

either Jack puts aside time to read her newest article word for word when having lunch or after work is done, at subpar lamplight, no matter how long it takes (- sidenote: he saves a copy of every edition Katherine has an article published in and soon enough realises that that's a whole lot of space for stuff to be taking up. from then on he just starts tearing out her articles specifically and filing them away in the back of a sketchbook. it's Months later still when Katherine finds out about it)

OR sometimes Jack will show Les that hey look Kathy has had an article published again, with full knowledge that it'll end with Les begging Davey to read the article out loud to them both. This is 100% on purpose but don't tell anyone bc Jack Kelly does Not get Read To. Most definitely does Not end up dozing against Davey's shoulder either on warm days when all three of them sit down and let him read

there's a few books kicking around in the Lodging House that are falling apart and are generally no one's and everyone's, which are sometimes employed for bedtime story reasons by the older kids when the littles ask for it. Most of them including Jack don't read so well over long periods of time so it's a lot less "reading bedtime stories" and a lot more "doing their best to recall the story with the book in hand, making up details as they go, and occasionally remembering to flip the page to keep up the illusion." The littles ofc know it's not Actual Reading but they don't say anything to break the illusion either

writing on the other hand goes a lot less well

Jack's handwriting is a mix of clumsy, childish cursive (from what little he did get to go to school, years and years ago) and equally clumsy print picked up mostly from newspaper font since that's the letters he's looking at 90% of the time

he's slow at writing, it feels clumsy and wrong, his spelling sucks (bc reading is not the same thing as paying attention to grammar and internalising it) and overall he fuckin hates it bc it makes him feel stupid so he avoids it at all costs. He also very specifically is of the opinion that it's unfair that being good at drawing doesn't also make him good at writing nicely

honestly unless it comes up very specifically and gets pinned against him, Jack doesn't really feel bothered by any of this. Or at least not until Davey, Les, and Katherine all happen themselves into his life

Davey and Les start bringing homework to Jacobi's or the Lodging House, and Katherine's whole Job is about reading and writing, and she has her notepad and pretty cursive, and Les' clumsy childish handwriting is still better than anything Jack can manage, and Davey practically speeds through books for fun and he can Actually Read To People

Jack does not enjoy this and is entirely silently fuming about it

he Also does not enjoy how susceptible he is to gravitating over and settling down when Davey gets roped into Actually Reading Bedtime Stories at the Lodging House. or that Katherine keeps leaving little handwritten notes with the boys if she wants to talk to Jack about something specific but they keep not running into each other bc they're both in random places all the time, like it's a wholly normal thing to do. can't these ppl just leave him alone (affectionate)

idk where this whole line of thoughts goes if anywhere tbh i just know that Jack hates feeling dumb and he isn't good at seeing that he is Not That when he silently gets caught up on not being good at something