Sharing Nostalgic Books

During our school day Meleah and Austin have time for self-selected reading, guided reading, and then I read aloud to them.  It has stirred up a strong sense of nostalgia to share books with them that I enjoyed when I was growing up. They have almost always enjoyed them as much, if not more than I did often begging me to keep reading long past when our reading period has ended.

Our most recent read was Madeleine L'Engle's  A Wrinkle in Time.  SparkNotes summarizes the book as follows.  "A Wrinkle in Time is the story of Meg Murray, a high-school-aged girl who is transported on an adventure through time and space with her younger brother Charles Wallace and her friend Calvin O'Keefe to rescue her father, a gifted scientist, from the evil forces that hold him prisoner on another planet."  It was a book that I read in about grade six and to tell you the truth, the story was not at all familiar to me when I read it this time - I just remember that I absolutely loved it growing up.

Since September we have also read Doublefudge, the fourth and final book in the Fudge series by Judy Blume and are currently enjoying C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe which is just filled with adventure and excitement.

Favourites that we have enjoyed in previous years are the Little House on the Prairie series, The Upstairs Room, Charlotte's Web, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and The Magicians Nephew. 

We have just barely scratched the surface of all that I want to read to the kids before they are grown and I just hope that one day, they will look back on these titles with the same sense of nostalgia that I have.

A little situation that happened last year makes me think that they just might... our family library always seems to be growing so once we have read a book, I often pass it on.   After we finished reading Charlotte's Web, instead of passing it on, I decided to take it apart to do some book art with it. When  Austin discovered what I was doing, he was absolutely mortified and devastated stating that he had planned to save that book for his children. I never would have cut it up had I known and I now owe him another copy.

"There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favourite book." - Marcel Proust