I remember my love of books beginning at a very early age.
I remember having my mom hold us in bed and read a book or two or three before we were shuttled off to go to sleep. I remember reading books or trying to read books and falling asleep on top of them. Well, I still do that :-)
I remember "reading" this book often. I would imagine myself in the story and pick our my favorite things on each page or I would imagine myself waling through the setting on the page and talking with the other characters.
Luckily, this book held up reasonably well and the kids now read it too. Richard Scarry was an awesome author.
I remember going to the library back in my hometown...down the steps into the basement, which housed all the children's books. Even now, I recall exactly where some of my favorite books were located in the stacks. The downside is that I don't really remember who the authors were to find these books now.
Brian remembers visiting the bookmobile in Forest Hills instead of the library. He says that he remembers there being tons of books in his house growing up, so there was never a shortage of finding something to read.
Our library here is awesome. I love our two children's librarians. They are both awesome with the boy and are really good at suggesting and finding books they think they will like. The weekly story time is fun and they are very patient with the squirrelly kids. Just lately, I asked one of librarians if she could find a book about piggies where the youngest refused to take a bath and said "icky-picky nope." Yeah...that's all I gave her to go on. Amazingly she found the book! It wasn't in our library, but she could get it on loan from another library and better yet, she found the Reading Rainbow show that featured it for me. Awesome.
Both of our boys love books to and love our trips to the library. We read two or three bedtime stories while all snuggled together. Lately, I soon as I finish a book, Jude grabs it and states "I read it!" He then attempts to flip through the book and repeat the story back that he has just heard. Tamlin waits until both stories are done and then grabs extra books to take to read in bed on his own. I've caught him imagining that he is in the story too, like I use to. They now want the light to stay on a bit longer in their room so that they can look at their books.
Tamlin's current favorites are:
Story books / Fairy tale books
Stephen Kellogg's Boa Constrictor books
Superhero and Ninja books
Bernstein Bears books
Books with mazes in them
Magic School Bus books
Jude's favorites
Books about stars...This one has been checked out several times from the library.
Books about cars, trucks, and trains
I spy books
Books about shapes or colors
Brian and I just can't wait until we can get them into older fiction and science-fiction books so that we can share our favorites with them...like Lord of the Rings and comic books!
I know I still favor holding and reading an actual book, even in this digital age. I have discovered that there is a virtual loaning library on Amazon. I borrow a book at a time to read on the Kindle for no fee. I have found a few interesting books... and some badly written romances so far. On the flip side, the interactive ebooks for kids are pretty cool. I try to score free ones when I can for the boys to play with and listen to. The downside is that it is confined to the tiny screen rather than a big book that they can hold and share. Who knows where the next technology will take us...
