Yesterday was my father's birthday and, naturally, we went to a bookstore to find him a present. This is a terrible idea! Me and my husband and our three boys in a bookstore is a recipe for financial disaster. We could easily have to get a second mortgage if we aren't careful in there.
Now, my eldest son had made a deal with me that he could spend some of his piggy bank money on some books he was wanting. Okay, no big deal. But then the two younger ones see the oldest with books in his hand (when my usual mantra in the bookstore is, "no books today"). Oh the injustice! The misery! Sadly, we can not afford to buy a lot of books in the bookstore. We are library/garage-sale/second-hand-store book people. I want to support my fellow writers by buying their books retail, but it just isn't always possible. So, I had to convince the "not fair" chorus that we would buy them books at a second hand store later this week.
In the end though, I couldn't help but think what a wonderful problem this is to have. My husband and I have actually had to devise a strategy because our children want books so badly. How awesome! I remember the same desire when I was a kid too. Every once in a while I'd get to order books from the book order forms that came home. And when they arrived...JOY! And for a while we belonged to several book-by-mail clubs. Some of those books are still my favorite today. Not necessarily because they are the best books, but getting them produced such happiness, it has carried with me all these years.
How fantastically awesome would it be to be the writer of a book that brought a child that much joy? That's one reason I write.
That is a wonderful problem to have. That's so great that your boys are that into reading.
ReplyDeleteI never got into reading until I was maybe eighteen and I first read Harry Potter. However, I kept trying to get into reading because of my mom. She was always taking us to the library and she was always reading. She loved it so much, so I want to as well.
Last weekend I took my daughter to the library's annual used book sale. All children's books were 50 cents. It was so liberating to hand her a canvas bag and tell her to "have at it." We came home with 20 children's books for $10. :-)
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