Joe notices that Pip’s bread is gone and he thinks Pip has swallowed it whole (“a bolting his food”). Mrs Joe gives Pip Tar-water to drink to make him either digest the bread better or to help it come up and out. Poor Pip. The bread is in his pant leg! She also makes Joe drink some too, just for good measure, I suppose. She calls Joe a “staring great stuck pig!”

“Tar-water is a Medieval medicine consisting of pine tar and water. It was foul tasting and so slowly dropped in popularity, but was revived in the Victorian era. The use of the medicine is mentioned in Great Expectations, Chapter 2 by Charles Dickens. Young Pip and his brother in law Joe were often force fed it by Mrs. Joe, Pip’s elder sister, whether they were ill or not, as sort of cruel punishment.” (Thanks wikipedia.)

I whipped out this very quick little watercolor of the Tar-water bottle. My son is having difficulty reading the book. In other words, he just can’t get into it. So I got him the audio book from the library (http://www.cor.net/library/). He’s not using it. We’ll see what happens! Hopefully something will click and he’ll start to like it. I’ll be back tomorrow for Day 9.