I think I’ve previously posted about my love of reading which of course led me to the desire to write. We didn’t have a lot of extra money, but the library was easily accessible and my maternal grandfather (the judge) had a wonderful library. While there were lots of legal/law books, he had plenty of others. Everyone in the family read to at least some degree. My favorite aunt was a librarian and specialized in children’s literature. She sent a copy of “Pat the Bunny” to me when son was born and that was the first book I ever read to him. In her card, she said it made no difference he wouldn’t be able to understand for a long time; reading to him was important.

Jump ahead a few years as he was learning to read on his own, yet he went through a time when he didn’t seem interested. I turned to my same aunt either during a phone call or a visit and said this puzzled me. She said that children will sometimes hold back from reading on their own because they think it will mean no more “parent-child story time”. I took that to heart and kept up the shared reading until one summer not long after when son became an avid reader and basically said he was too old for story time.

Jumping ahead many more years, a few weeks ago, my daughter-in-law sent a video of her with granddaughter as she was making her way through a little book. She was doing pretty well and only needed help with a couple of words. The other day, daughter-in-law posted this to Facebook, “I’m pretty proud of my kid’s reading skills. We’ve read to her every day since birth and now she’s a master.” They don’t have a very large condo and as much as I would love to shower her with books, I’ll see what they want to do about some sort of e-reader to supplement “real” books.