If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.
William Hazlitt
Books to Grow With: A Guide to Children's Books (Note: click left arrow at the top of the left menu or hit the backspace key to return to this post)This link also links to other great sites about different issues regarding children and books. Look at it close to find topics to fit your special needs in the area of children and reading. But don't forget that the children's librarian at the public library is also a trained professional who is willing and quite capable of helping us.
My wife and I have three sons--18, 22, and 28-- and one grandson, 18 months old. She and I are readers and introduced our boys to reading as they grew up and are repeating the process now for our grandson who is already asking us with his cute baby accent, "Read please." He already has favorite books, a fact that pleases us immensely. Please check at the above site for "professionall information" about children and books..
The other day I went to the library to
talk to the children's librarian and to take pictures. She selected eight books for our grandson to read. And the next morning, look at him go.Of course, the purpose of this blog is to promote reading and the library, the lifelong quest to educate ourselves by using the tools and the resources of the library. But I also believe in a person buying books if at all possible, especially for children. For me, nothing quite replaces the pleasure of book ownership. Since it is reasonable to expect that your children will come to prefer certain book favorites, it is very useful that they have their own copies. For me, as an adult, I also prefer owning books on my favorite topics; in additon, are you ready for this: I like to write in my presonal books, not library books.
It is not hard to find the children's section at the Carlbad Public Library: just turn left after you enter the
entrance to the library. Nowadays, as you head into the children's library, look for an exhibit about an old reading friends for many of us--Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet.
The information desk is the center of the children's library's operations. This is where you will find the librarian when she isn't out and about helping children or parents to find books or helping them by making suggestions on what they might like. Personal story: when I was a kid many, many years ago, a librarian introduced me to a book entitled Mr. Popper's Penguins. That book enchanted me, obviously, since I remember it all these years later; it was so funny. I just looked it up on the Carlsbad Public Library database catalog (available on this page) and this library has it. It was written in 1938 and republished in 1988. I must have been nine or ten when I read it the first time (stubborn reader that I am, I still recommend it). Imagine: a librarian recommended a book that I still remember 50 years later (although, inexplicably, I am only 35 years old). When you visit the children's library, here are some of the things that you will see:
books on display;stuffed animals; computers; encyclopedias; a world globe; all kinds of books
and audio tapes and video tapes;a colorful mat, magazines, in general, library resources for young people of all ages. And one other very important resource--librarians who know and love books. Many thanks to the kind children's librarian who I mentioned in this post; she helped me immensely on my recent visit there.
The book to read is not the one that thinks for you, but the one that makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that. James McCosh (Scottish-American philosopher and educator; president of Princeton University, 1868 - 1888) p:94, ibid,quotation book above)
© Bob Hoff, 2006
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