Books make great friends for a lifetime—December 24, 2010
I recently opened a fortune cookie that said “A Good Book Is a Good Friend.” What a great saying and it is so true! From a young age I made friends with Corduroy, and Amelia Bedelia and I even traveled with Babar to the Elephant kingdom. And with the help of Dr. Seuss I learned about Whoville, The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. These books helped develop my imagination so that I could become a creative thinker and writer, and the characters became close friends.
As I grew, my interest in books and the way that I read them changed and I found myself living with Ma and Pa, Mary, Laura and baby Carrie in the Little House on the Prairie, or solving mysteries with Encyclopedia Brown. By this time I had learned to put myself in the character’s position and I was fishing on the banks of Plum Creek and could smell the sweet grass growing on the banks all because of how this writer put down in words a way for me to see and feel what she felt.
Now that I have a young son, I want to enrich his creative bug with books. My family and I have been reading to him since he was very young. We started with board books that have only one or two words per page. We have gradually added bigger books with more words and more of a story. One of his favorites is The Wheels on the Bus. He would have you read this book 4 or 5 times a night just to hear mommy make the noises such as Wah Wah Wah, when the babies cry. He will yell “again mommy again”.
I cannot wait to introduce him to a lot of my old friends and I hope that he and I can make new friends. I find myself wandering through the children’s room of the library looking at books and making mental notes as to when he might be ready for certain stories. Some new friends that I know he would love are Minnie and Moo and the Musk of Zoro by Denys Cazet, Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell, The Three Silly Billies by Margie Palatini and Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk.
Bring the whole family to the library and get reacquainted with some old friends and make some new friends.
