Plugging In

A different voice for every princess.
Every knight and all the dragons.
When my mom read Tolkien you could tell the difference
between Frodo and Bilbo Baggins.

We spent so much time reading out loud
on long drives or nestled in reading nooks.
Much of the man I am today was influenced by all the good books
that my mother and father read to me when I was no more than a child.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and I know The Call of the Wild.
Charlotte’s Web, Watership Down, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry,
The Diary of Anne Frank, A Wrinkle in Time, and The King Must Die.

Read to your children all the time:
novels and nursery rhymes, autobiographies,
even the newspaper. It doesn’t matter, it’s quality time.

Because once upon a time we grew up on stories
and the voices in which they were told.
We need words to hold us, and the world to behold us
for us to truly know our souls.

Taylor Mali, taken from his poem Reading Aloud

Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault

(As a sidenote, I believe this is a copy from the 1950’s)

In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us — not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.

John Irving, Until I Find You

Quote from Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline series