“Reading offers you the opportunity “to build a self, because you create a self, you don’t inherit it.”

While recently playing with a toddler I was so taken how everything they

touch, see, smell, hear and do is building the person they are growing into becoming.

It brought to mind a comment from a literature course taught by Professor Edward Taylor in the1940’s. His introductory remark lives on—

“Reading offers you the opportunity “to build a self, because you create a self, you don’t inherit it.”

Simply put, to build a self involves acquiring beliefs &values where you experience emotions so that the self becomes larger and capable to absorb more complex ideas of life and living.  The books we read to children, the books they hear and absorb, nurture their spirit of wonder, showing them who they are at a moment in time and who they might become.

A cartoon from the New Yorker shows a mom reading to her son with the caption:

“I can’t protect you from everything, but I can read you stories that make you believe I can protect you from everything.”  But its not just the story line that delivers the message of being protected; feeling protected and loved is also communicated inside the closeness coming from the experience of being read to.

Librarians are Fairy Godmothers in disguise

Start the year off right—Make a librarian your best friend. Back to school is a busy time— new schedules and routines, making new friends, and new challenges. I highly suggest making a Librarian, your school or community librarian, your new best friend. 

Someone who will come to know you in a very unique way—knowing what you like to read and what you don’t like to read. Librarians seem to have cornered the market in enthusiasm…. I am always grateful and so appreciative when I am introduced to a book with the enthusiasm librarians seem to have in great abundance. A Librarian on friendly terms with his or her collection, who know what books to put into your hands, is invaluable.

One of my dearest Librarian friends just introduced me to a book on the merits of making mistakes, Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty, perfect for the K-Grade 2 set.
The book is a celebration of creativity and perseverance, qualities we all need in abundance.

Its been said —when you absolutely positively have to know, ask a librarian.
Looking for that special read—ask a librarian for a little help.
As Rita Mae Brown said “ When I got my library card, that’s when my life began.”

An important Back to School conversation for parents and children

An important Back to school conversation for parents One of the biggest challenges for parents is to be able to tolerate their children’s mistakes and failures, giving them the necessary space to fail. Avoiding experiences in which you might make a mistake may be the biggest mistake of all. The ideal to strive for is not to avoid making mistakes, but to be able to admit them, smart enough to learn from them and strong enough to correct them.

“To shelter children every step of the way is to raise “failure deprived” college students and entitled and anxious 20-somethings who can’t function in a world that’s sometimes cold of cruel or indifferent, “says Megan McArdle. Talking with children about failure, sharing your ideas and feelings about mistakes can be helpful for all.

A book to jump start a family conversation about failure and mistakes is Mistakes that Worked by Charlotte Jones. The books tells how ordinary objects, from an ice cream cone, the zipper, seeing eye dogs, ivory soap, & the post-it-note came to be from failures. Mark Twain’s introductory quote, “Name the greatest of all the inventors. Accident.” says it all.

The books begs the questions—


~ Can you go through life and never make mistakes?



~ Do you think it is possible to be perfect? 



~ Is perfection boring? Is there risk, fun, and adventure in perfection? 



~ How do you feel when you make a mistake—embarrassed, foolish, stupid?



~ Do you try to deny or defend your mistakes? 



~ Does the fear of making mistakes make you less wiling to try new things or take risks?

Additional books on failure for parents—
Gift of Failure, Jessica Lahey, How to Raise an Adult Julie Lythcott-Haims & The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well is the Key to Success” Megan McArdle

Reading is more than just a nice thing to do with kids

Reading to young children is associated with good outcomes and new studies tell us a little more about what actually happens when you read a picture book to a small child. A recent study found more brain activity depending on how much the children had been read to at home. The part of the brain that becomes activated is also the part of the brain that becomes active when children read to themselves. 

The findings reinforced how important it is that young children hear language, and that they need to hear it from people, not from screens.  The language that children hear in a book is more “unique word types” than found in every day conversation. “So reading picture books with young children may mean that they hear more words, while at the same time, their brains practice creating the images associated with those words.”

“Reading to children has a very important role to play in building brain networks that will serve children long-term as they transition from verbal to reading.” Reading to children also makes them feel safe and loved—reading it true comfort food for children.

Lucky the children who have parents and extended family and friends who read to them

I just received an email from a mother who took a children’s literature class with me when her children were young. Now they are in college but they have not forgotten the pleasure their favorite picture books of long ago offered and they certainly remember the love that came along with being read to. The young woman, while eating peaches asked her mom if they could read Peach and Blue when they got home.

More than likely it is the experience of being read those dearly loved picture books of childhood that turn children into adult lifelong readers. No one ever forgets the kind of love and attention that comes from a “Reading Relationship” where parents and children share their thoughts and feelings.

The email brought to mind the well-known poem by Strickland Gillian.

I quote a little of it here—

I had a mother who read to me

Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea,
Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth,
"Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath…

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be —
I had a Mother who read to me.