I am a huge giant bookwork and consider myself lucky that I was introduced to books at a very young age. My grandparents instilled a great love of all books and one of my earliest memories is of me sitting on my grandmother's lap while she read a Little Golden Book- Snow White. I can still hear her cackling when the old witch did, with such candor. She did such a good imitation that I shivered every time I heard it, but begged and begged her to read it to me over and over again, until she probably hid it from me for a bit!
My life is better thought of in terms of books, when I was little I was obsessed with The Little House on the Prairie books, as a middle schooler I stayed up late into the night, hiding under my covers because I was scared silly reading any vampire book I could find no matter how gory. Later it was poetry books about romance, monologues that made me laugh, letters from World War 2, and so on. Even now I have a stack full of books by my bed, no specific order to them or reason, just books that I love or books that caught my eye. It has gotten to be so that I can't sleep unless I read before bed, no matter how late it is. (A curse when I am up late painting or Etsying!) It was really important to me to teach my children not only to be good readers, but also to love to read. I wanted them to turn to a book for entertainment instead of video games or the TV. I not only read to them all kinds of books, but also let them see me take time out of the day to read my own books. I think that this is truly important because then they can see for themselves how caught up I am in my book, how it touches me, they can ask me questions about it, and just observe me doing something that I love.
Not only do I model reading for myself, but we visit libraries often (more than once a week!), as a family we have a great collection of books about everything from princesses to zombies and home improvement, and I pay attention to what subjects the girls are into so that I can steer them towards books that will catch their attention!
This is one love affair I do not mind sharing with my girls, and hope that they develop one of their own as well and early!
