"Wear The Old Coat And Buy the New Book"

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to read and always have. I wanted to take an opportunity to share an awesome blog my friend Adrienne wrote called 60 Ways To Make Reading Fun. You can click on the title to read it. I love her ideas and wish I had this earlier in the summer. We will for sure be trying some next summer and when Asa gets a little older.

I come from a line of readers. My grandparents love to read. My grandma is usually reading her Bible or a Christian book while my Pops reads historical, political and joke books. (Must be why he has a joke for everything.)  If you go to my parents' house any given day you will see mom with her Kindle and Dad with his astronomy books. Many of my aunts, cousins and best friends are readers too. Some day, I WILL start a book club with my girlfriends complete with themed dinner for each book we discuss. It's on my bucket list.

I remember my parents reading to me when I was young as well as my teachers. From sitting in a circle while my  kindergarten teacher read a page then showed a picture, to sitting at my desk as my 6th grade teacher read from a chapter book, many of my best school memories involve books.  Anyone else remember the Book It program?  Do they still have it?  A free pizza for reading books? Don't mind if I do...

 If you don't remember that how about this:

I also recall one year in grade school, we each had a paper catipillar hanging from the ceiling that grew longer the more we read. Kinda like the one below, but each slip of the caterpillar was a piece of paper our parents had to fill out when we read a book. My caterpillar touched the floor quickly and proceeded to build quite the nest down there.

Before my grandparents moved, I stayed at their house a lot. I'll always remember a series of books they had filled with children's stories. Not only did I like to read them, but I remember copying them. Since my granpdarents moved when I was really young, I did this before I could really write, but I did my best. I remember Dad telling me I had to put spaces between words when I wanted him to read what I wrote. Guess I knew then I wanted to be a writer. I mentioned these books to my grandparents at our last visit and Grandma brought them out for me. Sure enough,  I saw my little check marks next to the stories I had copied back then. I opened up the books and smelt them. Ah, just as I remembered them. Everyone laughed, but I love old book smell, especially books I loved as a child. (Why can't scentsy make a little cube of that, huh?)  Grandma told me I could have them so we came home with a load of books. I can't wait to share some of these stories with the kids! Don't worry, I won't make them smell them.

When Josh's kids came that first Christmas right before the wedding to visit us we had maybe 5 children's books. This is children's section now, a year and a half later:

What's funny is Josh and I probably only bought about 10 of these. Between Gram and Auntie Kelsey who are teachers and the rest of my family and friends who are readers, they didn't have a chance not to end up with a book shelf full. Not to mention that for Asa's baby shower people brought and signed books for Asa instead of cards (awesome idea!) We originally had the kids keep their books in their rooms, but didn't have much space for them. We wanted to make sure they were taken care of so Josh bought this shelf thinking we'd still have lots of room left on it.  Oops.

Yesterday our book collection grew again when Gram brought us more books including the one below that I got a good laugh about. Groundhog Day is my favorite comedy movie ever so until Asa is old enough to watch it with me, this will be our Groundhog Day tradition. If only I could be read to us in Bill Murray's sarcastic voice:

"Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today.."

She also bought these history books which are secretly for me:

As for me,  my summer reading is The Thornbirds. I knew nothing about it, but wanted an historical family saga spanning years since that's the style of novel I'm writing.  It's taken me a while to read it since this summer has been busy, but I'm really enjoying it when I get the chance and have a whole 1983 miniseries to watch when I'm finished. There for awhile I thought I'd never find a book I really got into after finishing 11/22/63 by Stephen King. I read two or three books right after and didn't enjoy them much so I'm so glad I found a good one again.

 

That picture makes me laugh because it's so true.  Especially so for me when I read Water for Elephants last year.  For weeks I felt sad trying to read a new book at night because I wanted to back to that circus train.  I've read several since that have been hard to let go of as well. That's when I know I just read a five star book. Speaking of five stars, if you are a reader and looking for new books consider signing up for goodreads.com and adding me as a friend. It's completely free and a great way to rate the books you've read and find others you might be interested in.  I'm looking forward to October when my favorite "modern" author Kate Morton's new book comes out.  I discovered her last year on goodreads and read all three of her books back to back, my favorite being The House At Riverton. Its ending still haunts me.

We are getting ready for our last summer reading party this weekend. Our Alice In Wonderland dinner should be a fun one.  Mom bought us the animated version that the kids haven't seen and saved the day since the library didn't have it. I checked all summer to make sure they had it to check out in the dvds and it showed they did each time, but when I went to get it yesterday they discovered it had been lost somehow. Funny thing is last summer I checked the week before our Secret Garden Party to make sure they had the movie and they did. I went the day of the party to get it and it had been checked out. What are the odds? What's even more crazy is I went to Hastings to rent it and it had been rented too. I finally found it in a five dollar bin to buy and as I was in line, the lady in front of me asked where I found it and went to look for a copy for her as well. Was someone trying to sabotage that party or did I time travel back to 1993 and to a world where that movie was widely popular?

So how about you? How to you instill a love of reading in your children? Is reading something they enjoy doing or something you have to tell them to? We still have to tell Josh's kids to read, but they enjoy being read to more so that's a start. Have you ever read the original of any classic children's stories?  I did in trying to find summer reading stories and had to opt for edited, retold versions.  It seems like children were much smarter back then to understand and enjoy those stories. Must have been because they didn't have ipods and video games. ;)

To close I want to leave you with one last quote, this one by Walt Disney. I think I need to have it above our book shelf too! Happy Reading!