Bring in the New Year 2012: Take a ride on a butterfly.

Don’t be like the two caterpillars who were crawling along on the ground when a butterfly flew over them. And one caterpillar said to the other, “You’ll never catch me going up on one of those.” But I’ll ride a butterfly any day. And I hope you will too.

~Madeleine L’Engle

The Importance of free-thinking bookstores.

George Whitman, the American-born owner of Shakespeare & Company, a bookshop on the Left Bank   in Paris dies at the ripe age of 98. He opened his bookshop in 1951 because he believed the book business was the business of life. He welcomed visitors with large in-print messages on the walls- and one of my favorite was “Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise” quoting Yeats. Support your local independent neighborhood book shop—ask yourself, what your neighborhood would look like if that shop didn’t exist.

Why do children want the same book read over and over and over again?

The many rewards of rereading were recently recalled in an article in the NYT: “Read it again, Sam.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/books/review/read-it-again-sam.html
We remember our first encounter and reaction to a book, and at the same time, we are amazed to think that the book has somehow changed. The experience of rereading keeps you in the moment and also takes you back in time. But what is behind children wanting you to read them the same book over and over again? For children, rereading is not just a rewarding experience but essential for them to get ready to learn to read. The books children ask you to read over and over again—and yes, you think you can’t read that book one more time— helps them understand how narrative works and offers them comfort and familiarity with the story and the characters. They know the story, in fact they have most likely memorized the story and can “read it’ to you. This is one of the ways children get ready to learn to read. And the love affair they have for a particular book begins a lifetime of meeting books that become their lifelong companions. So yes, do read Danny and the Dinosaur once again, and again, and again.