Our Love of Books

"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents." — Emilie Buchwald

Dustin and Emma love books which makes me so happy.  I enjoy reading as well and my mom always has a book in her hand so it warms my heart when Dustin and Emma curl up with a book.   Here is a much younger Emma reading with her mittens on and Dustin discovering new books in our "book basket" in the living room.  

Emma's love of books probably started when I was pregnant with her.  My sister gave me the best baby shower gift.  A book every day for the last 30 days of my pregnancy.  Every book was wrapped and included a heartfelt card - sometimes explaining the choice behind the chosen book.  Here I am the morning of my scheduled c-section for Emma opening the last book-Everywhere Babies. 

Here's a list of the 30 books (sorry no author names but most of them are classics you'd know anyway):

1) Very Hungry Caterpillar
2) Brown Bear, Brown Bear
3) The Tushy Book
4) Cat in the Hat
5) Guess How Much I Love You
6) Barenaked Book
7) Richard Scary's Best Word Book Ever
8) Beatrix Potter
9) Where I Live
10) Everywhere Babies
11) In the Garden
12) Growing Green
13) Mother Goose
14) Big Red Barn
15) Green Eggs and Ham
16) Red Fish, Blue Fish, One Fish, Two Fish
17) Goodnight Moon
18) Mortimer
19) Something Good
20) Barnyard Dance
21) The Going To Bed Book
22) Where The Wild Things Grown
23) Someday (I actually cried when I read this to Emma tonight!)
24) The Velveteen Rabbit
25) Big Earth, Little Me
26) You're All My Favorites
27) I Love You Sleepyhead
28) I Love You As Big As The World
29) Hop On Pop
30) Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You?

Many of those books continue to be our favorites.  To encourage Emma's love of reading even more we visited the local library quite frequently when I was on maternity leave.  I always tried to direct Emma to books that we both might enjoy.  But as you can see with the picture below she loved "character" books like Theodore, Barbie, Dora and Caillou.  Not exactly the classics I envisioned us reading together.

Does your toddler have books you just dread reading? I'll be honest.  When we curl up at bedtime there are a few books I think "Oh no...not that book again!!??" especially when Emma picks Dora's Crystal Kingdom or Caillou's First Picture Dictionary (that was the one I dreaded the most).

I guess I'm just happy as long as Emma is reading something.   And I'm sure it won't be long that Emma won't even want to read with me.   So if that means reading "Barbie Princess Beauty School" four times than I will continue to do so - with her curled up on my lap.

~Elizabeth