It’s got to be genetic. Blue, my son of 15 months, toddles up to me madly waving a book in one hand and yelling “Story! Story! Story!” Spitting image of Beangirl at that age. Some families have great hair or athletic skills. We pass down an ecstatic attitude towards narrative. Great.
But I eat this up. I love that he is as mad for books as his sister. And his father. And … well, his mother. Perhaps it isn’t so surprising. We are a literary bunch, devouring books and wearing down a path to the local library. We had to make a rule around the meal table a while back. We can read at breakfast. (It’s breakfast, for pity’s sake. Everyone reads the newspaper at breakfast, don’t they? And my husband’s a journalist, so consumption of information early in the day is vital, right?) But we can only read at breakfast. When we’re eating any other meal, it’s rude to read newspapers, novels and (yes) even cookbooks. A remarkably difficult rule to keep. I’m always getting busted.
It’s a bit easier since we’ve made the move in with my parents. For one thing, with six of us around the table, there is less space for reading material. And more emphasis, all around, on manners. We’ve also packed away a lot of our books into boxes. Because we are only here temporarily, it doesn’t make sense to try to have them all out on shelves. So we each have a condensed library available, and make do.
Recently, Beangirl and I have been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie. Not your typical storybook selection for the preschool set, but she loves it. We started with Little House in the Big Woods, which was admittedly picked out by said preschooler because of the little girl on the cover hugging her beautiful dolly close as close can be. But what’s fantastic about these books is Wilder shows us how difficult it is to be a child—being brave and being scared, being little and being strong, being selfish and helping others anyway. They are stories about goodness. Not necessarily stories about behaving well, but about deep and compelling goodness. Reading these stories, you know that to be somewhere cosy and bright and with family is to be connected to a greater goodness. And sometimes that’s hard because the house is small and being a little sister and a big sister at the same time isn’t easy. But there’s always Pa’s fiddle at night and Ma’s soft smile, too.
Good stories open us up. They make us think about the world more broadly and beautifully. Beangirl borrowed a book from the church library not too long ago that retold the story from Acts about Dorcas. And her mind grew. In the story, there was goodness in buckets—Dorcas spent all her time sewing clothes for others so that the poor people who lived around her would be warm and comfortable. And because of that goodness, there is also magic. When Dorcas got sick, and sadly died, she was brought back to life through Peter’s prayers. I cannot overemphasize the effect that this story has had on Beangirl’s spiritual and social development. And I think we’re going to spend a long time working through the ramifications of helping others and resurrection…
Another great favourite with us is Shirley Hughes’ Dogger. We’re fans of all of Shirley Hughes’ books—Alfie and Annie Rose are as close as kin to us—but Dogger is special. It’s the story of a boy named Dave and his stuffed dog, Dogger. Dogger gets lost, as stuffed dogs do. Dave’s family pulls out all the stops looking for him. No luck, no Dogger. The next day is the day of the school fair. Bella, Dave’s big sister, wins all the prizes. Races and raffle and everything, including a huge new teddy bear with a beautiful bow around his neck. Dave’s feeling even crummier, and Bella’s now part of it. But then Dave finds Dogger. He’s at the rummage sale table with a tag on his ear, and Dave doesn’t have enough money to buy Dogger back. He hunts for his parents but can’t find them anywhere. He does find Bella, and together they go to fetch Dave’s toy. But, disaster of disasters (and this is the hard part to read), Dogger has been bought by a little girl. That’s when Bella steps in. She convinces the little girl to swop Dogger for the beautiful new teddy with the bow around his neck. We always look carefully at the pictures—you can see from Shirley Hughes’ wonderful illustrations how hard it is for Bella. But she makes the world right for her little brother.
I think that these kinds of stories are vital in any home. Goodness and magic educate our hearts. And I don’t just mean the kids. They teach me, too. They help us all to expect love, creativity and hope. And they teach us that it’s hard to be caring all the time. But that it is okay that life’s hard. We’re up to it, most of the time.
