Books, Books and More Books

My children love to read. When Avery gets quiet and disappears, I often find her with her nose in a book. She has discovered one of my favorite reading spots in the house.

The afternoon light is just right to settle down on the couch with a good read.

Aidan prefers to read at night. He takes a stack of books up on his top bunk and is often the last member of the family to fall asleep. I am sometimes awaken by a thud, but I know it's just Aidan dropping a finished book on the floor to make room for the next book. Daddy's old books made their way to our house recently, and the kids were ecstatic to have a new selection to choose from.

I don't remember loving books so much when I was their age. I had a few Read-Along Disney books and tapes I remember listening to in my room, and of course the first two books that made me want to read, Put Me In The Zoo and The Cat In The Hat. My mom read often, and always took my brother and me to the library, but I often read because I had to. When I read by choice, I chose inappropriate books for my age. I remember my mom catching me on a beanbag in the children's section of the library reading Danielle Steele. I was probably 9 or 10. My friend loaned me Flowers In The Attic when I was 13, and I spent the next few years devouring every book written by V.C. Andrews. In hindsight, the books were far from appropriate and certainly not literature.

Fortunately, a few years after my V.C. Andrews phase, I discovered Edith Wharton, Jane Austen, and E.M. Forster. My kids are in The Age Of Innocence, and not quite ready for Sense and Sensibility, so I am slowly collecting and reading classic literature that is both age appropriate and enjoyable for all ages. Our shelves are filling up with Jack London, L.M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, C.S. Lewis, John D. Fitzgerald, and many other authors I should have gotten to know as a child. We have also revisited books I remember my mom reading aloud, specifically books by Beverly Cleary and E.B. White.

What books did you enjoy as a child, and what classics are you revisiting now with your children? Our books shelves and library lists are always open to suggestions.