Today is my son's birthday. The awesome little fella is one. His favorite book is, "What Does Baby Say?" Nice big, simple pictures of cute little kids saying things to fit their mood: "What does the hungry baby say? Ba-ba." I love reading this book -- and others like it -- to him. I love watching my wife read these books to him. Sometimes he's just not in the mood and instead wants to point at the ceiling fan or crawl after the dog. But most times he's looking intently at the illustrations, his big beautiful curious eyes moving all over the page, looking at all the little details, pointing, always pointing, at the stuff that he thinks is cool. "Duck! Duck!"
In a couple weeks it will be my daughter's birthday. The incredible young woman will be 18. She's at college now. She recently started a conversation with, "Dad, I think I'm an existentialist" and wants me to send her the collection of Hemingway short stories she accidentally left behind. She's jonesing for Hemingway and the existentialism she finds there. Cracks me up. I love talking books with her -- listening to her get excited about what she's read and what she thought about while reading it, sharing stuff I've read with her and the thoughts I had reading.
Every night of my daughter's life, until she learned to read herself, I read her a book. Now, that's what my wife and I are doing with our son.
Cheers, kids, to your books. Trust them: they won't let you down.
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2 comments:
Books are incredible … and great fodder for the young imagination, especially for people like us, who want to transform ideas into pictures.
Dear God... I can't believe it's a year... that just means we get older and older....
sigh.
Congrads, man. You're two for two... may Dec grow to be as brilliant as your first.
And you and Amy better get busy if you wanna keep things going...
remember - trying is the best part...
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