Read To Me!
By Lucky Tomaszek
Since 1919, educators, librarians, booksellers and families have celebrated Children’s Book Week during the week before Thanksgiving. Founder Frederich Melcher believed “Book Week brings us together to talk about books and reading and … to put the cause of children’s reading squarely before the whole community and across the whole nation. For a great nation is a reading nation.”
This year, Children’s Book Week is November 14 through 20. Families, schools and libraries all over the country will have the opportunity to relive their favorite children’s stories. There will be book signings, author lunches, receptions, read-a-long parties and other wonderful literary happenings.
In our home, we have some children’s books that we continuously pull out. These are the books I buy for other people’s children as well, to share the love we feel for these stories.
Family FavoritesOn the whole, our favorite Tomaszek family book has to be Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, written by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Ray Cruz. We follow Alexander, the youngest in his family, through the typical trials and tribulations of a kindergartener, watching him struggle with all the same things that affect each of us. The book ends with Alexander going to bed, hoping things will be better tomorrow. We love this book for its realism and honesty. My children all pick it over and over.
Of course, Dr. Seuss has so many great books, it’s hard to only talk about one. Great Day for Up is a wonderful, fast paced rhyming story about the joys of waking up in the morning. Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are has some of the best Seussian passages ever written. I received it as a child, and my older sister and I can still recite most of the book from memory!
For bedtime stories, we come back again and again to Jean Marzollo’s Close Your Eyes. With a slow and melodic meter, the lilting text relaxes everyone and helps sleepy eyes close. But the words only tell half of the story here; there is an entire subtext beautifully illustrated by Susan Jeffers about a father and his efforts to get his young son ready for bed.
I have given each of my children a copy of On the Day You Were Born, written and illustrated by Debra Frazier, on his or her first birthday. The powerful prose introduces the concept of being part of the circle of life, including the following: “On the day you were born the Earth turned, the Moon pulled, the Sun flared, and, then with a push, you slipped out of the dark quiet where suddenly you could hear… a circle of people singing with voices familiar and clear.” The illustrations are clean-lined collages of nature and people all weaving their way through the earth.
Be indulgentI’m sure most of you read with your kids, but events like Children’s Book Week give us the opportunity to share our favorites with each other. They also give us the opportunity to indulge ourselves (and our children) by doing things like cuddling up on the couch with a picture book instead of pushing ourselves through the common routines that often fill up our days. VS
