cats in the cradle and the silver spoon...
I noticed a Babar book on the sorting shelves today and idly thought, hmmm, I've never read those to Ben. And suddenly it hit me: the time for sharing picture books with him is finite. More likely than not, there will come a time when he doesn't want them anymore.
It's a terribly sad thought. What will we miss? What have we missed? I don't really care about Babar, which I have mixed feelings about anyway, but I wonder if there's something special out there we never found.
What picture books do you think it would be a terrible shame for a childhood to be without?
It's a terribly sad thought. What will we miss? What have we missed? I don't really care about Babar, which I have mixed feelings about anyway, but I wonder if there's something special out there we never found.
What picture books do you think it would be a terrible shame for a childhood to be without?
posted by web at 8:23 PM
2Bligs:
I feel the same way about the Francis books. I know I've read them to the kids, but did I read them enough. I don't think that the books are among their favorites, which means to me, that I did it wrong.
Motherhood = guilt.
It's not just picture books. I never got my kids to read or appreciate Milly-Molly-Mandy books or the Famous Five/Island of ... Enid Blyton books. Even now I fret that the older ones aren't willing to read some of the formative books of my early teenager years - The Outsiders, Robert Westall's Devil on the Road, and others. But they have their own tastes, even when tiny. We can do our best as parents with enthusing and enthusiastic reading and talking about a book (though not too much) but there will be some books we loved that they will never get around to liking or even being read. There is a finite amount of time to read and be read too, and an increasing number of books in households such as ours. You need to be a reading maniac to read them all. I guess we just have to enjoy the books our children do love to hear read, and the ones that form their own strong childhood memories. I've just stoppped reading to my 13 yr old daughter - that point of stopping the reading connection between yourself and your child is quite traumatic after 12/13 years of nightly stories and chapters.
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