National Children's Book Week

Recently three hours in a car that seats six, but not comfortably, was made fun rather than unpleasant because, at my grandson’s request we listened to The True Meaning of Smekday.  As I listened to my grandson giggle in all the right places from the back seat and my husband joining in beside me, with moments of laugh out loud enjoyment, I marveled at the universality of “children’s” literature.  Walter de la Mare, in Bells of Grass, says so eloquently: “I know well that only the rarest kind of best in anything can be good enough for the young.”  I would not change the children’s claim to “the rarest kind of best” in literature, but one thing I would change is the tendency of adults and young adults to think that they have grown beyond books labeled “children’s” literature.

National Children’s Book Week is May 13 – 19^th.  Take the time to celebrate by treating yourself to a children’s book.  Better yet enjoy it with a child.  There is no more satisfying magic than that moment when you meet in a book and understand each other and life at a new level.  Some of my favorite titles that have been springboards to just such moments are:

                The Fortune-Tellers by Lloyd Alexander

                Anansi and the Talking Melon by Eric Kimmel

                14 Cows for America by Carman Agra Deedy

                Midnight Fox by Betsy Byars

                Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary

                Wonder by R J Palacio

                One Hen - How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference by Katie Smith Milway

                Charlotte's Rose by A E Cannon

                A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

“Reading is one of the true pleasures of life. . .it is mind-easing and mind-inspiring to sit down privately with a congenial book...” Thomas S Monson

Give in, take pleasure in life, READ!

-Anita



Anita is the Children's Book buyer for the BYU Bookstore and has worked at the BYU Bookstore for over ten years! Anita spreads her love of reading within our Children’s Books department and with many local book events such as Books for Young Readers, Education Week and the Annual Christmas Booktalk.

Summer Reading

Here at BYU, we are finished with semester. That means time to read things I want to read!

Since I'm not taking classes this summer, and I'm not spending a huge chunk of the summer writing for a newspaper or traveling, I am hoping to get some more fun reads in.

This is my summer reading list:

1. MockingJay: I've read the first two Hunger Games books and started this one, but I didn't finish. I figured it would be good to read the third one before the second movie comes out.

2. The Harry Potter series: I read them all very quickly about six years ago and I would love to revisit them. I figured, they were the books that got me to read many other books the summer of my junior year of high school so maybe they would help me read more again. Plus, they're surprisingly quick reads.

3. Designing Brand Identity. I'm getting way into wed design and graphic design and I bought this book for Christmas. It's way overdue to be read. Non-fiction books are my guilty pleasure, what can I say?

There you go, that's what you can expect to see me reading this summer. I try to not make too ambitious of reading lists seeing as it's a difficult habit for me to develop in the first place. Wish me luck this summer!

-Hillary