Once Upon A Time, This Was My Favorite Book

I don't know about you, but the ONLY reason I don't read as intensely as I did as a kid is so I don't end up a hobo.

One of my librarian friends shared this article about passing books down from one generation to another this morning, and I've been thinking all day about sharing MY literary loves with my kids. I've been collecting the books I want to read aloud as soon as they're old enough since Mr. T was born, and this article just inspired me to start rounding out my list (skip the weird bit in the middle where the author wonders if being a bookworm is the reason she's a single, childless 30-something, because that's just INSANE). Remember the Scholastic Book Club flyers and -- even better -- the day all the books you ordered came in?

Here's an excerpt from the article, in case you can't get over there and read it right now:

Of course, we still read, my friends and I. We read on the subway and on the couch or in bed just as we used to do. But it’s not the same: the subway ride ends, the couch inspires naptime, a flashlight under the covers is absurd. I certainly can’t remember the last time I heard someone say, “I was walking down the street reading a book when….”

The diminishment of the intensity is an evolutionary imperative. We reach a point at which we no longer allow ourselves to read like that because if we did we would never get anything else done. We wouldn’t meet new people or remember to make those doctors appointments. If we still read with the intensity of an eight-year-old or loved with the intensity of a novice, at thirty we might forget to leave the house at all. ... But that fact does not make me sad or give me pause and not because I tell myself that if it were otherwise I would have ended up a hobo.

I don't know about you, but the ONLY reason I don't read as intensely as I did as a kid is so I don't end up a hobo.

My astronaut-obsessed toddler has me counting down the days (well, years) until he's old enough for The Martian Chronicles and just about everything else Ray Bradbury. That was one of several books I got for Christmas when I was 11 from my parents, who chose it because my dad remembered reading and loving it at about the same age.

My grandparents would give each of us 9 grandchildren books at Christmas, and we'd spend all Christmas Day reading. By the end of the day, we'd swap all the books we'd finished and end up going home with completely different sets than we'd started the morning with. In one of these swaps, I ended up with someone's copy of Scott O'Dell's Black Star, Bright Dawn, which became one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE BOOKS EVER BECAUSE IT IS SO AWESOME. Because I have a son, I'm always on the lookout for books that have girl protags + adventure -- I want him to know that reading about girls can be cool, and O'Dell's books certainly fit the bill. So does Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George, a book that, along with Jack London's ouevre, had me obsessed with wolves for years.

Both my grandmothers introduced me to my bosom friend and kindred spirit, Anne Shirley, and my mom's mother gave me my first copy of Little Women. I remember sitting curled with my two girl cousins at my paternal grandparents' house, all three of us absorbed in the March girls' lives.

Although I didn't discover Ivanhoe until well past college, it remains one of my favorite adventure stories ever. Seriously, take my dad's mother's advice to him one summer day in the early 1960s -- get past the first 50 pages, and you won't regret it. She was right, and while I'll probably skip those pages (or summarize them) when I first read it to my kids, Sir Walter Scott will definitely get a reception in my house.

Other books from my childhood I adore, to the point of reading the cover off in the case of The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop (I just found out there's a sequel, but I'm saving it for the readaloud years), include Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, Trapped in Death Cave by Bill Wallace, The Three Investigators mysteries by not-really-Alfred Hitchcock (by Robert Arthur, Jr. and his ghostwriting stable), and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. T already asks for that one, but only has the attention span to get through a couple of pages. No pictures are a hardship for a toddler! My best friend's little boy frequently makes her day by asking for Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin. And of course, no list like this would be complete without the Harry Potter series, although I didn't read it until my 20s.

What about you? What books from your childhood do you dream of passing along to the wee ones -- related to you or not -- in your lives?