Arielle makes the rounds to her favorite shelves that hold fairy tales and folk stories from other lands, the Nancy Drew mysteries, magazines for young girls, or her favorite--historical fiction. Liana looks for books about musical instruments, art, or ancient civilizations. And of course ducks. The girls never want to leave, yet the longer we stay the stack of books to check out gets taller and taller. I go through the readers to find books to interest Liana. She is a very discriminate reader. Forget talking animal books, ones with TV characters, or even books about kids her age. No, she wants action, history, and foreign places. Once I thought I'd found the perfect book and even ordered it on-line from our inter-county loan service. It was called A Doll Named Dora Anne about a girl who's given a doll handed down from her grandmother. (I would have liked it when I was Liana's age.) Liana read it but it wasn't nearly as interesting to her as Escape North about Harriet Tubman or Ben Franklin's Big Shock.
I remember long ago coming home from the bookmobile on a hot, summer day. My mom and I would get a cold drink (no A/C back then) and curl up with a great story and read away the afternoon. Well, my mother probably had to stop reading way before she wanted to in order to cook dinner or care for the younger kids, but she would read as often and as much as she could and still does. She left a legacy and my children are following in her footsteps. 
We're home from the library and the girls' chosen books are scattered on the carpet around them. The house is quiet as they read, lost in other worlds.
2 comments:
Deb,
This brought back fond memories. I too am a lover of books and have always been. We did not live near a library, so a trip to a library was a special treat. I would come home with stacks of books. On a very rare occasion, if I begged long enough and Mom had 50 cents to spare, she would buy me a book. My first “adult” book was a "Call of the Wild" by Jack London. Mom bought it for me, when I was in the third grade. I think I read that book at least 4 times over the next 5 years. In the eighth grade, our class started its own library system. We could borrow donated books from the eighth grade library. I was in seventh heaven. I devoured every Nancy Drew mystery that I could get my hands on. My mother was also an avid reader. She was also a speed reader and would sometimes devour three books in a day. Later in life, when she developed Macular Degeneration and could no longer read, she starting "reading" books on tape. After she passed away, I got a list from the Free Library of all of the books she had "read". There were at least 1000 that she had listened to in 5 years. Someone recently said to me "you read too much". I don't think that is possible.
Joan
Thank you for your story, Joan. Your mom was quite amazing! I agree, you can never read too much. I always think, "so many books, so little time."
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