Children’s Books Build a Foundation for Reading as an Adult

By Reaona Hemmingway


February 7, 2012

     Tomorrow is my grand-nephew’s fourth birthday. His mother wants him to receive books as presents. I’ll confess that’s not what I got him. I made him a small quilt for curling up with his mother on the couch to read. It’s wonderful that she reads with him when so many parents today sit their kids in front of a TV to provide them entertainment. His favorite books right now are those about dinosaurs and dragons.
     When I was growing up households only had one television and ours was often in need of repair once my parents found the money to pay to get it fixed. During our TVless times, we read or played games together. As little kids, we read a lot of Golden Books and other books like one of my favorites, “The Teeny Tiny Woman.” Around fifth or sixth grade, I discovered the Hardy Boy Mysteries. From there, I moved on to books written by Louis L’Amour, Luke Short, Zane Grey, and Max Brand. The whole family, except maybe my younger sister, read these westerns. We often sat in the living room reading different ones and read passages to each other when we came across something funny or dramatic.
     After I graduated college and began looking at marriage and having children, I started collecting a few children’s books like Beatrice Potter and a collection of Winnie the Pooh stories. I didn’t read these as a kid and, as an adult, wished I had. As a reader, I’m slow. In school, I tended to read a lot of poetry books in order to fulfill my book reading quotas for school. With the exception of the westerns, through junior high and high school, I only read assigned books. So my intention for collecting children’s books was to read them to my own children. Unfortunately, I never had children, which means no grandchildren to read them to either.
     Last fall, I purchased an iPod, which I use as an ebook reader. On the iPod, I’ve downloaded several classic novels. I’m still a slow reader, but I want to read the books I missed reading in my younger years when I spent so much of my reading time on westerns and romance novels.
     Don’t get me wrong, I love westerns and romances. They fulfill the need for adventure and love I wish I had in my life. But as they say, “Reading is fundamental.” What you read also makes a difference in how you interpret the world around you. I want the challenge I denied myself when I was younger and avoided the harder to read books. It’s now time to read the books that make the mind think.
     As I’m writing this, I’m thinking about writing my grand-nephew a story about either a dinosaur or a dragon for Christmas this year. His mother is laying a good foundation in him by wanting him to have books. Now that I’ve given him a quilt to cozy up with, I’ll write him a story to read while curled up with Mom.

(c) 2012 Reaona Hemmingway