When I was a toddler, my mother put a drop of honey on a page of one of my cloth books and told me to lick it off, hoping that I would make the association between reading and sweetness. It’s been a long time since I’ve licked my books, but the pleasure of reading remains. I have photos of my mother reading to me as a youngster, but I don’t need them to remember the books:
The Goops and How to Be Them
The Story About Ping
The Little House
Paddle to the Sea
And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Babar the Elephant
and of course, the Little Golden Books like this one . . .
And so many more!
Just before my mom remarried, the first thing my soon-to-be new dad brought me as a gift was a book about cars. I was 7 and I’ve never forgotten.
What are some of the books you remember with pleasure from your childhood?
OK, so we’ve licked the honey off the page to guarantee a sweet association with reading. But now, at 11 or 12 or 13, you’re way past needing artificial sweeteners and by now have discovered that the real sweetness is in the act of reading itself.
The Black Stallion (all of them!);
The Black Tanker and other books by Howard Pease;
Treasure Island;
Hardy Boys (all of them!);
David Starr, Space Ranger and other books by Isaac Asamov
And so many other wonderful books that drew me in and transported me to other worlds. Mostly I read to myself, by myself. But there were times, especially with my older, girl cousin, when we would read “together.” We’d lie on the floor and she’d read her book and I’d read mine. I don’t remember that we talked much about what we were reading, but there was something quite magical in being in the same place at the same time and just reading.
Do you have memories of reading with a friend or relative and when that was enough?