Christmas, with books!

There is nothing like a five and a half day Christmas break - especially when those days are filled with books. Because, yes, of course I'm the auntie who gives books for presents. Like you need more toys? Please. In my day we played with glass soda bottles and wooden napkin rings. And Cabbage Patch Kids. And Barbie. And My Little Pony. And Legos. And I was trying to make a point, what was it.

Right! Books! For presents! Easy to store, easy to wrap.

I also made sure to hit up the library before they closed for the holiday to pick up - among other things - my hold of B.J. Novak's The Book With No Pictures. I figured it would be a good read for my five-year-old niece who would be old enough to appreciate the humor.

And did she ever.

She giggled throughout the first reading, and then asked me to read it again, giggling in anticipation of the parts she had already laughed at once. The next night, she asked for it again, and by the third night, she was reading it to me. (With help from her mother. She is, after all, only five, and the book does include words a bit beyond her current vocabulary.)

There was something kind of amazing about seeing that happen, about watching a child's enthusiasm for a story translate into the desire to want to read herself. On the smallest, most individual scale, I had just witnessed in practice the theory that I preach to all the youth services librarians in my system - that to encourage pleasure reading is to help develop a love of reading in children. Part of that is letting kids pick out books that appeal to them, but another part of it is throwing books in their path that they might not have picked out on their own.

In many communities in my rural system, the library is one of the very few places that kids can even lay their hands on a book, so having the opportunity to expose children to titles that they might not see at school or in the magazine aisle of their local grocery store is just so important and awesome.

 Or at least I think so. But then, I would. I'm the auntie who gives books for presents.