This is one of my most cherished photos.
There is nothing I love more than reading to my grandchildren. Second to that, I love buying them books. Books they will love to read and I will love reading to them. I should not go to a bookstore with my credit card. Amazon and Chapters have me on “speed dial” Perusing used book stores is one of my favourite pastimes. You never know when you will find a treasure.
“The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination”
Elizabeth Hardwick
I received my love of reading from my parents. I can still see, hear and experience my dad reading Anne of Green Gables or Little House on the Prairie at night in bed with me. I remember the hours I spent in our local library. As an introverted child my favourite pastime was getting lost in a book.
I know that all my childhood reading shaped the adult I am today. It opened a world that was infinite. It gave me a new level of consciousness by exposing me to the wisdom of all times and places. It gave me a profound awareness of myself and where I could fit in this great cosmos. I could ask questions, I could learn. Reading created empathy. It created the way I think.
“I think in a time like ours, where so much of the public discourse tells us that we are antagonistic, that we’re separate, fiction is a wonderful way to remind ourselves that actually that’s a lie.”
George Saunders
If you can do one thing as grandparent that will change the world, read to your grandchildren every chance you can. Buy them books; picture books, fiction, non fiction. Read to them. Talk to them about what they are reading. Make them life longer learners, create young people who can communicate globally and they will change the world. Job well done!
(if you are not a grandparent, find a literacy program and volunteer, everyone deserves the gift of literacy)
Amazed With Mystery 
I love George Saunders, too. I just got out of my library a delightful children’s book, “Mr. Wuffles,” about a cat who is bored by cat toys because in the house there is a little flying saucer with tiny green beings in it. Very little reading to it, mostly told in pictures, so I don’t know if your grandkids are too old for it. You’re so right about reading to them, holding them close. My only grandchild is now six feet tall, and I miss that.
Mr. Wuffles sound purrfect for the kids.Thanks for the suggestion. Picture books can be very meaningful, and the use of imagination can not be over rated.
Mimi
Mimi! You have shared your love of reading so well. You made children who love to read (and think) and grandchildren who are the same. Thank God. It is the beginning of thought, imagination and dialogue… an amazing gift.