One of my favorite memories from my entire life happened when I was very young – about 3 years old.  There are pictures of me in a big armchair holding my baby brother (he was only a few months old), and we are wrapped up in a bathrobe together.  I’m holding one of my favorite picture books, upside down, and I’m reading aloud to my brother.  My mom tells me that I wasn’t even actually telling him the story of the book – I was just talking at him, but I sure thought I was reading him a book.

It’s such a sweet memory, but I didn’t really realize its significance until the other day when I was talking with my mom.  I always just thought that I wanted to read a book, so I picked it up and there we went.  My mom tells it a bit differently.  The other day, she said,

“Well, when you were little, you equated reading with giving love.  You thought that if you loved someone then that meant you read to them.  You loved to be read to, so you thought that your Daddy and I read to you because we loved you.  You loved your baby brother, so you thought that to show him that you should read to him.”

Wow.  When you think about it like that, there’s a pretty powerful message there.  Yet again, I’m hit over the head with how important it is to read to children.

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