Books! Sweet Books!
Such magical things,
filled with ideas,
and thoughts and dreams.

Page after page
of marvelous words
big ones and little ones,
they want to be heard!

Long ones and short ones
and ones in between,
new ones and old ones,
there’s so much to read!

Open a book
and a journey begins,
then open another
when that one ends.

You’re never alone
with a book in hand
they are portable friends
that make life so grand.

Okay, so the poem is a little cheesy – I wrote it when my kids were little and just beginning to discover the joys of reading on their own. They grew up surrounded by books, I read to them from the moment I brought each of those little bundles of joy home from the hospital. Books are important to me, I wanted them to be important to them as well.

These days, it seems even more important for parents to teach their children the value of reading, to help them find the magic books contain. I wasn’t competing with the volume of video games, cell phones, and internet when my kids were still kids; we read and we made up stories and we sat on the floor and played together, sometimes we still do.

My children have friends who have never picked up a book for the sheer pleasure of losing themselves in it, the only books they’ve read were assigned to them at school . . . I must admit, it makes me feel a little sad for them. I know not everyone enjoys literature as much as I do, but I just can’t imagine a life without it.

I have a lot of books, a lot. I kind of hoard them to be honest. I have more books than I will ever have time enough to read, but that doesn’t stop me from getting more each chance I get. This morning I was practically giddy when my Barnes & Noble coupons arrived in the mail, perfect timing, don’t ya think? It is World Book Day after all.

I don’t have the shelf space I need, not that it matters, I just stack them here and there and everywhere. I think it might drive my husband a little nuts, he isn’t much of a reader, I don’t know how I missed that when I decided to marry him. He likes to hear me read though, when we find something he has even the slightest interest in, I’ll offer to read it to him and he almost always takes me up on the offer. He likes to listen to the things I like to read too, at least he lets me think he does.

He keeps promising to build me more shelves, he’ll have to if he wants the book towers to disappear. One day he says he’ll build a room just for me and my beloved books and I really think he will. The next kid that leaves home is having their room turned into a sanctuary for my books until he does . . .

~ Happy World Book Day ~