Celebrate by taking your kids to an Indie
It may be a little silly for this particular blog to make a big deal out of a day that acknowledges the importance of bookstores–it’s basically like the Hallmark website saying, “Let’s celebrate greeting cards today!”–but sometimes on this blog we get swept up in all the specifics of this store or that store, this holiday or that holiday, this genre or that genre–and with all those trees, we lose sight of the wonderful lush forest that inspired Kim and me in the first place: the many bookstores we love.
A couple of weeks ago, a teacher at my kids’ school stopped me and asked me if I had any advice on getting kids to read. He’d noticed that my kids (or at least my two younger ones, both of whom he’d taught) are voracious readers and he was wondering if I had done anything specific to nurture that. I was touched and honored a teacher was consulting me and, as always when I feel especially eager to say something helpful, my mind went completely blank and I couldn’t think of a single useful thing to say.
I ended up muttering something about how I stopped reading out loud to my kids as soon as they could read to themselves and maybe that had something to do with it?
He reacted to that useless bit of information as politely as anyone could, thanked me (lord knows what for) and went on his way.
A little while later, I had one of those hit-your-forehead-with-your-hand moments of frustration. Why hadn’t I mentioned the importance of bookstores in our lives when my kids were little? That was probably much more of a link to their love of reading than my bedtime neglect which, let’s face it, is more of a link to my laziness and selfishness than anything positive.
Claire
Kim
