Late May, with Memorial Day quickly approaching, announces summer is about to arrive. A perfect summer activity awaits—the joy of reading a book just for pleasure, with no assignment attached, while eating an ice cream cone.

Louise Erdich was recently asked what book made her who she is today? Her response speaks volumes—It’s wasn’t a book, but it was stories. My family made life into stories. The stories we hear and the stories we tell make us who we are. Children are made readers on the laps of people who show their love by reading aloud, adding stories to a child’s memory bank from which they can draw on for a lifetime.

Children who are nurtured into becoming readers have a lifelong gift. They can go anywhere they please; they can meet extraordinary people, showing us who we are at a moment in time and who we might BEcome. No Matter the age, there is no statue of limitations on Becoming.

As children grow into adolescence, all too often they put their efforts into fitting in, leaving little energy left for finding out who they are. A child you loves stories and knows what it is to be nurtured by stories has a better shot of traveling on the road of BEcoming, not just fitting in and going along. They become the narrator of their own story.

This young girl is well on her way to dreaming, writing her story. Deep in my heart is my hope that one day she will share her story with me but if not, it will be enough to know stories nurtured her BeComing.

Peter Pan's creator would be 156 years old

J.M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan 112 years ago and yet the book lives on in the mind and heart of every child who has read the story. What might be less known is the family tragedy that inspired Barrie to write the story of Peter Pan, the story of a boy that stayed a boy forever.

His 13-year-old brother cracked his skull in an ice-skating accident and died. Their mother was devastated. In an attempt to console her, James Barrie, six years old, went into her room where she lay grieving. In the dark she asked: “Is that you?” 

Although he couldn’t see her, he knew she was holding out her arms for the dead boy.

Jealously, young James did everything he could to become his brother, even dressing up in his clothes. He would never grow more than 5ft tall. Somewhere deep down he became convinced that leaving childhood was life’s greatest catastrophe. So he invented a story about a boy who stayed a boy for ever. He called him Peter Pan.

In honor of his birthday, here are a few wonderful quotes that extend his legacy.

When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.