""Blessings Strengthen life and feed life just as water does." Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

This blog is a digital blessing bowl, a place to record the small blessings that are often missed or forgotten but which make life holy. Feel free to add your own blessings to my blessing bowl. Or perhaps you'll be encouraged to start your own.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

"Honey for a Child's Heart". . .and for mine


When my children and my sister's children were small, she gave me a copy of "Honey for a Child's Heart" by Gladys Hunt.  The back cover of the book states "A good book is a gateway into a wider world of wonder, beauty, delight, and adventure."  The book guides parents in including reading in family life and in encouraging children to read.  And there's a book list, too, with suggestions for all ages.  We read many of the books on that list as a family.  Some we read aloud, others the children read on their own.  One of the joys of all the reading was that I was introduced to these books, too.  I loved "The Secret Garden", "The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe", and "A Certain Small Shepherd" as much as my children did.  I have always been a voracious reader, and my mother was a believer in the public library, where we spent a lot of time.  But for some reason, I had not been introduced to many of these books.
Now, as a grandmother, I love reading to my grandchildren.  I look forward to the time when they are old enough to enjoy what my daughter called "chapter books" - when they beg for "one more chapter" before the lights are out.
But I discovered all those years ago that those books are not just for children.   I'm currently reading "Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis, which I started just after finishing "The Magician's Nephew" (no, I'm not reading them in order!).  I read Madeleine L'Engle's  "A Wrinkle in Time" not long ago, and am thinking of re-reading the Austin Family books.  Or maybe I'll go back to some other classics - the books I read as a preteen or teenager, such as "Little Women" and "Jane Eyre".  Whenever the new books in the book store or on the library shelve are unappealing, I know it's time to read something that will nourish my soul.

  My dad reading to three of his grandchildren in the early 1980s.



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