The Love of Books

Beautiful book picture found here.

Books have been on my mind a lot lately.

First of all, my mom posted an entry on her blog about reading books to her grandchildren. It was really sweet.

This morning, my friend J. and I were talking about children who love books versus children who hate to read.

I am so very grateful that I come from a Book Loving Family, and that my children share that love!


Many, many years ago, when my sister was 19 months old, she had a SCARY huge vocabulary! (Makes sense. As an adult her IQ was in the 170's!) My mom made a recording of her talking that she'd planned on sending to the grandparents. She never got around to sending it, and when we were older, she found it.

We LOVED listening to it.

On most of the tape, they were looking through a picture book and talking about the pictures.

I still have the book. The pages are getting old and a little brittle, and you can see the binding has been taped together.
When my mom was here, she brought me a tape player because I no longer had one, and I really wanted to listen to the old cassette tape. (I also have a few others in a box somewhere of the two of us playing together.)

I sat down a few nights ago to listen to it. I was filled with excitement as I plugged in the tape player, took the old tape out of its case and popped it in. I hit Play, and....

...nothing.

When I pulled the tape back out to look at it, I noticed the tape was broken.

Thankfully, I'm not afraid to take things apart and mess around with them. The only problem was I've misplaced the tiny set of screwdrivers I needed to really do the job correctly, but I made do with what I had. I discovered the old cassette had two different kinds of screws, and two of them wouldn't budge. I managed to pry the one side open and then was able to twist the case until the last one came out. I reconnected where the tape had separated and attempted to put the whole thing back together.

And attempted again...

and again...

I figured I needed to take apart another one to see what I was doing wrong, so I went downstairs to get my collection of old cassettes. (I need to write a blog entry about the treasures in that case!) I found one that was a home recorded one that I have since replaced with DVD, and figured that would be a safe one to disassemble.

This one was much easier to take apart since it was a good twenty years newer. Once I had it open, I realized that I could just put the old tape inside the newer cassette. The recording is certainly more important than the cassette that holds it, after all.

I carefully moved the old tape into the new(er) cassette and closed it back up. I put it back into the cassette player. Then, I took a deep breath and hit Play.

My sister's sweet little baby voice came through the speakers. I'm currently 6 years older than my mom was when she made that tape, and it was really fun to hear MY OWN voice coming out of the speakers! There was enough of a difference that it was still her own distinct voice, but it was fun to hear how much of it sounded just like me. I've always been told I sound like my mom - the actual comparison of us in similar ages is really interesting. And my sister was only 3 months older than my own little Pirate Baby is now.


Meanwhile, I'm so happy that my children love books so dearly. I used to read to Pirate Munchkin all the time when she was little, and now she is rarely found without a book in her hands. And Pirate Baby is just as interested in books - although right now, he really just wants to turn the pages.

This is one of my favorites to read to him. It's really cute.


The other thing that's fun about having children who love to read is trips to the library can bring up really fun memories. I remember going to the library as a family when I was growing up. The rule was we could check out the number of books that matched our ages. I follow the same rule with my daughter. (Which reminds me. I forgot to tell Pirate Munchkin that she gets to check out 8 books now that she's had her birthday. I need to remember that for next week.)

We went to the library yesterday, and I was delighted when she picked out this favorite from when I was little:

Books were always a big deal in my family. For generations, there were always treasured books in the house. I remember seeing my grandparents read, both of my parents, and my children see me reading all the time. It warms my heart to see they share that same love.