By ROD WALTON Staff Writer on Sep 21, 2012, at 12:50 PM Updated on 9/21 at 12:50 PM
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A relative of mine had a baby recently. A blessed event at all levels, but especially considering she and her husband had been trying for some time.
Anyway, I was casting around for gift ideas for that someone who has almost everything. I was told she didn’t have a lot of classic children’s books, so that’s the direction I took.
Ssh! Keep this to yourself but they don’t have them yet and I got “Goodnight Moon” and “Do You Know How Much I Love You?” Both are considered classics in their own way and my memories of them are vague, but happy.
Thankfully my children, all grown up or getting there way too fast, still love to read. They devoured the Hunger Games books and my daughters, like my wife, run through books once every few weeks or less. Their dad and brother are, shall we say, a little slower in that respect.
But buying these children’s classics reminded me how much I enjoyed reading to my kids before bed. We knew nearly every rhyme of the Dr. Seuss wonderments and lesser, but also well-known titles such as “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.”
I became a big fan of the “Junie B. Jones” series by Barbara Park. I laughed at the antics of that clever, trouble-prone little girl and even adopted her voice (best I could guess) when reading passages where Junie was quoted.
There’s so many to pick from, whether it’s “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” when they’re too old for “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” and even versions of “Black Beauty” and “The Call of the Wild.”
Reading some author’s work was wonderful but we also had a good time making up stories. I’d lay down trying to get my daughters to go to sleep and they’d beg for stories where they gave me locations and occupations or circumstances. I’d somehow deliver a once-told, never-remembered classic about princesses and battles and magic that almost always earned me a “thank you daddy” and a goodnight kiss.
Imagination is cool. I still remember being 10 and reading “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” for the first time. I couldn’t tell you now if they were Mark Twain’s legit editions or abridged, paraphrases but I loved the stories just the same.
For a time I was secretly hoping for a giant flood in landlocked central Oklahoma so I could build a rough-hewn raft with a tent cover and living life a’free-booting like it was nobody’s business. That's how much I soaked up the Tom and Huck adventures.
My son went through pirate and war phases, reading fun stuff about Bluebeard and more serious historical accounts of the Battle of the Bulge. He’s more likely to read Sports Illustrated now for the latest about Tim Tebow or Kevin Durant.
I can’t say I had this innate love of reading as a child. I was interested in people and things, whether was the Dallas Cowboys, Beatles or World Wars. So I read all I could get my hands on, all the while building up my repertory of words and vignettes.
That’s all I can hope for as my children grow older and farther away. Keeping reading and finding out about smart people, amazing places and tales worth telling.
And if I can pass that along in some small way to a new generation of parents who’ll read stories and even make them up at bedtime, well that’s a grand time to be had by all.
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