Bookworms Abound…

Keely finds a tiny new bookworm snuggled near a stack of her favorite titles, and reminisces on her own love affair with reading. But where will Nora’s love of literature take her next?

My kid loves her books. Really loves them. Even though she’s only a year and half old, she’ll sit there with a stack of books for almost an hour. It’s awesome – and, more importantly, it allows me to shower during the day.

I wish I could take credit for this terrific habit of book-devourin’, but it’s just another one of those things that we exposed her to and it somehow took. (There are plenty of tales from the opposite end of the spectrum – hats, brushed hair, eating chicken… )

I read to Nora when she was only a six pound beastie clinging to the underside of my rib cage. Swan Lake, The Poky Little Puppy, Ender’s Game – all of these calmed her nighttime water ballet. (Perhaps it was because the simple act of my reading aloud settled both of us, but I also like to think she dug the subject matter.)

When I was little, I couldn’t get enough of my quiet reading time. (My mother also claims that I napped every day after kindergarten, too. God bless middle children.) Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, (and those times when Nancy Drew teamed up WITH The Hardy Boys!), The Boxcar Children, The Babysitter’s Club (and requisite Little Sister), Encyclopedia Brown, Choose Your Own Adventure (even though our local library only had about five books in the series and I always ended up getting the one about the girl vacationing in Scotland – although every single conclusion ended badly), Judy Blume, any Coming Of Age young adult fiction… and, of course, books deemed inappropriate for my age range. Those were the best.

My first foray into the world of Books Not Handed To Me was when I found a series of novels on my parents’ bookshelf. Being a knowledgeable nine year old, I dismissed them at first as yet more baby manuals or dry histories. Imagine my shock to find out the dull, grey, canvas hardcovers were about magic! And Merlin, and Arthur, and medieval Britain, and a completely different retelling than the familiar “Sword In The Stone.” Mary Stuart’s Merlin series was decidedly adult, undeniably romantic, and not exactly par for the fourth grade reading list. I adored them. Zipping through the hefty volumes, I read and re-read them. I planned elaborate book reports (for years!) Oh, the mileage my English projects got out of this series.

Most importantly, I wondered just what else my parents knew if they had stuff like this in their possession.

Nora has her magical books, too; if not in sorcery than in the spell they cast, requiring repeat readings of The Little Mouse, The Red, Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear. Goodnight, Moon is another that has boggled us. There’s hardly a storyline! It’s all object-naming and repeated goodnights! But that’s wondrous to her, I’ve realized. The permanence in finding each clock and sock on their exact page. Knowing that the moon will be a little higher in each frame of window.

And she’s taught us stuff about her favorite books, too. I’ve owned a battered copy of Goodnight, Moon for quite awhile. Yet it took having a toddler of my own to point out that the mouse – yes, he of “goodnight, little mouse” fame – is on every single page featuring the main room. Every page! At first I thought she was just impatient for the mouse to show up (along with the red balloon), but then when I asked her where he was, she pointed him out. Each time. (I won’t give away the locations, but some of them were downright surprising. Go on, look for yourself. I know you have this book in your home somewhere.)

I can’t wait until she’s big enough to discover Douglas Adams and Orson Scott Card in our bookshelves, and will come to us, hands on her hips, and demand to know how long we’ve owned Agatha Christies and Nero Wolfes.

Hopefully she’ll wonder if they’re age appropriate. Hopefully the fact that they’re not will entice her.

And then she’ll discover that her Dad was guilty of smuggling books to the dinner table as a precocious nine year old himself, and that her Mom was (and is) a speed reader with a penchant for hiding books under the covers.

But for now, it’s bedtime in the great green room (yet again), because we love her to the moon – and back – and want her dreams to be peppered with bears missing buttons, deserving porcupines, and little Parisian mischief-makers.

All of the important stuff.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 5:20 am. It is filed under Being Mama, Motherhood and tagged with Development, Reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.