Reading for Renewed Joy

As I think I have mentioned in this place before today, Sharon and I enjoy reading aloud to our children.  We don’t, so much, read aloud to our older children, these days, but when they were the age of our younger set, we read to them, too.  Having said that, our older children listen in on what we read to the younger ones, and all of us participate when we read the Bible aloud at the table, or in church.

I have recently re-discovered another benefit for reading aloud to my children.  I have the privilege of re-reading books that are as familiar to me as a threadbare cardigan sweater (or a Harvard sweatshirt).  On one level, it helps me recall the joy, and sometimes the circumstances of my first reading of said book.  On another level, I see and hear and feel the book from awholenother* perspective, as an adult.

Case in point; While taking some training in Minneapolis last week, our crew was staying at the Fairfield Inn in Coon Rapids, MN.  It’s just a hop, skip, and jump, so to speak, from the Coon Rapids 1/2 Price Books.  As I haven’t brought home books for the children for awhile, I decided to splurge on a whopping $10 or so for a handful of books.  Among my purchases were Lewis’ second book in the Narnia series, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  The Ingalls-Wilder series I first heard as an elementary student, at home, from my mother, over 30 years ago, and have read at least once previously to our two girls (ages 16 and 14) when they were in the early primary grades.  As for Lewis’ book, it was a surprising gift from a friend when I was but a sophomore in high school.  It was enjoyable then, and even more so this time through.  I’m reading it now to son Leif, but I indulged myself in a 3-hour session of reading it straight through last week in the hotel.

Anyway, go re-read those dog-eared copies of well-loved books.  Better yet, share them with a child; your own, a favorite neice or nephew, or a neighbor child or two.  They’ll likely be glad you did.

*A fine example of a word that isn’t in the dictionary, but should be.  Similar to “wholelotta”. (I’ve heard both of these “words” for years, but it just dawned on me recently what I was actually hearing.)  Definitions for both of these words should be fairly self explanatory.