Joshua and Micah are 7-year-old fraternal twins who live in London, Ontario. Besides sharing a birthday, they share one major personality trait: enthusiasm. Each boy is eager to tell you all about his current interests. But that is where the similarities end, because while Joshua can’t wait to explain stories from his favorite graphic novels, Micah wants to share his knowledge of animals large and small.
Amphibian or reptile, extinct or alive, animals are fascinating to Micah. He is slowly building a collection of fossils, which right now includes brachypods and coral. Recently, Micah and Joshua went on a family trip to Nova Scotia with their mama, Jenna, and their mom, Judy. Micah found seashells while exploring tide pools on the Atlantic coast, and, he remembers, he also saw sea snails, a hermit crab and a horseshoe crab.
On an upcoming trip to Michigan, Micah is looking forward to swimming in the hotel pool, where he plans to pretend to be a coelophysis—one of his favorite types of dinosaurs, because they were so fast. He might also pretend to be an animal that is still alive today.
“Sea creatures, that’s mostly what I do—and chase my brother around because he’s probably going to be the fish that I try to eat,” Micah says. He is very knowledgeable about animals that don’t usually get as much attention as marine mammals like dolphins and whales. He especially loves molluscs, crustaceans and amphibians. In case you thought molluscs (which include animals like snails and clams) were not the most dynamic creatures, Micah points out that octopi are molluscs. Octopi have lots of interesting adaptations, like the mimic octopus, which Micah says “tries to mimic other animals and not get eaten that way.”
Micah loves everything to do with water, except maybe fishing. “I don’t go fishing because I don’t know how to fish a lot, but if I could, I would look at the fish and not eat them,” he says. When he grows up, he wants to be “an amphibian protector-slash-paleontologist.” [k_1411_p_Micah2.jpg, caption: Micah loves searching for wildlife in tide pools]
Micah is a big fan of school, and is now in the second grade. “I love that you write, read and work” at school, he says. He has also made several good friends at school. Luckily, one of his best friends lives in the same apartment building as Micah’s family, so they can play together all the time.
Joshua and Micah are friends with several of the same boys, and in addition to these, Joshua can rattle off the names of a dozen more of his buddies. Although he is especially close to two of his friends, Joshua really enjoys all of their company. “I have a lot of best friends,” he says. [k_1411_p_Joshua1.jpg]
When Joshua and his friends get together, they especially love playing Minecraft and other computer games. The boys have plenty of virtual adventures together as they explore the different levels of the game. It gets pretty exciting, especially when they are being chased by mutant zombies!
School is a lot of fun because “all my friends are there,” says Joshua. Recess is a great chance to play with friends who are younger than he is and are not in the same class. He also really likes math class, especially when he finishes his work early and gets to play educational computer games—the kind of games with no “shooty stuff,” as he puts it.
Although Joshua is very social, he’s happy to sit and read on his own, too, especially the Bone series of graphic novels, which he describes as “action-packed.” Three Bone books are coming with him on the family trip to Michigan—along with one Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, which is “like my next in line of my favorite books,” after the Bone series and the Captain Underpants books, Joshua says.
In the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, Joshua enjoys how the main character, Greg, draws pictures as well as writing in his diary, “so we can see what it’s like.” And just like Greg, he keeps his own diary where he records what happened to him throughout the day.
“I like to write stuff. Write stuff down, like stuff about my day. Like if I don’t want to say stuff, I normally just write it down to talk,” Joshua says. He writes so much that he needs a new diary, because “all my pages are filled up.” Joshua has a specific type of blank book in mind. “I’m going to ask Santa for a diary with more than one thousand pages that has golden letters that spell ‘diary’ on it,” he explains.
Micah and Joshua may have different interests, but they are also really good friends who play together all the time. Who wouldn’t want to have their brother as a best friend, and their best friend as a brother?
