Somewhere up in my 12-year-old daughter’s bedroom, buried within the piles of stuff that tend to accumulate in a preteen’s personal space, is a copy of Terry Pratchett’s young adult novel, “The Shepherd’s Crown.” There’s a bookmark in it, about two-thirds of the way through. I started reading it to her months ago, but I suspect I’ll finish it alone. She’s on to her next chapter now—and I suppose I am, too.
I’ve been reading to my kids for more than 18 years, and it’s always been one of my favorite privileges of parenting. It started with board books when my son was an infant. I probably read Eric Carle’s “The Very Busy Spider” hundreds of times to my three kids throughout their toddler years, with each animal character getting its own voice.
We then became regulars at the Belmont Library children’s room for more than a decade. I would go with the kids every few weeks and fill a cloth tote bag with 20 to 30 picture books on each visit. I’d sit down and read two, four, six books a night, then read the same books again a few days later before heading back to the library for a new batch. During our peak years, it was hard to find books at the library we hadn’t read, and I always had to go straight to the new book section.
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Reading to my kids never felt like a chore. Whether it was watching their eyes grow wide at the bright pictures when they were infants or answering their thoughtful questions as we moved on to more complicated chapter books, reading to them has been a joy. I’ve also discovered some of my own personal favorite books through reading to the kids: Tove Jansson’s Moomin series, Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows,” Michael Ende’s “Momo,” George Saunders’s “The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip”—all wonderful. I could never get through the end of A.A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh” stories or Catherynne M. Valente’s “Fairyland” series without bursting into tears, likely because the protagonist children in these books were growing up and moving on, just as my own kids were.
Though I’ll sorely miss reading to my children, I’m incredibly grateful that these years of literary exposure helped make all three of them become avid readers themselves. I’ve been swapping book recommendations with the older kids for years. My son wants to discuss the latest Brandon Sanderson novel we’ve both read. My older daughter and I look forward to reading the next installment in Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce mystery series. And this past winter, my youngest, the aforementioned 12-year-old, got me into Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s “Inheritance Games” series. (It’s a little spicy!)
Is it too much to ask that we keep giving each other book recommendations forever? I hope not. My dad and I still give each other reading recommendations. And who knows? The literary journey with my kids may have yet another chapter. Recently, my newly 18-year-old son showed me the first few paragraphs of a short story he was writing. And it was good! I’m biased, of course, but maybe the next generation of parents will talk about my son’s work with their kids.
Eric J. Perkins writes about Gen X for The Belmont Voice.
