Books I Am Thankful For: Part 1

For the next three days I am going to talk about specific books I am thankful for and why. Today's theme is: I am thankful for books that bring me closer to my boys.

Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book
Remember bringing your first baby home? How amazing and wonderful and scary it is? And for the first few days it feels like you are never alone with your baby because so many people are visiting you? When I did get a quiet moment with my first born it was to feed him and I always pulled this book out to read to him. It is such a quite book and when you are reading Dr. Seuss it is almost like singing because there is such a rhythm and rhyme to the story. I still love pulling this one out and it always reminds me of those first few weeks of being a new mom.

Home Price by Robert McCloskey
I love Homer Price, I loved this book when I read it when I was younger and bought my own copy to share with my kids when I got older. However as they got older it was harder to find time to read aloud a novel because bed times were different and we were busier. etc... A few summers ago I just felt the need for us to slow down a bit, so I started reading Home Price to them. We all loved it, especially the doughnut chapter. This was the last book I got to read aloud to them start to finish, so it will always hold a dear space in my heart.

Henry Huggins (the whole series) by Beverly Cleary
Home Price was the last book I read aloud to them, but around that same time we got a car with an ipod jack in it. I bought us the first Henry Huggins book on audio, loaded it on my ipod and we started driving around town listening to audiobooks. We listened to the whole series in about three months. My boys would ask to go the long way home so we could listen to more. My oldest was in fifth grade but he was still young enough to really love these books. It helped that they were read by Neil Patrick Harris and he does an amazing job! We even too a pilgrimage to the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden in Portland Oregon when we went out there for spring break after we had finished the books. It is a great memory for all of us!

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
My oldest son is not an avid reader. He would never just pick up a book...or so I thought. When he was in fourth grade he still had to keep a log of minutes he read. It was like pulling teeth! I had seen a good review of the first Diary and checked it out from the library. I had it in a pile in my room and one evening he was in there reading a different book. He came out a few minutes into his reading time and asked me if he could read Diary. I said yes, that I had actually checked it out for him...and for the first time my son felt what it was like to love a story. Any book that gets him to chose to read over anything else holds a very special place in my heart!

Out of all the countless books my boys and I have read together these are the ones that really stick out with a special place for me.