Community Chat

[Oznell]

And @just bee and @golding76, also love your enriching back and forth and stories!

[just bee]

@zanna

My siblings and I were raised by my mother who waited tables.  She was a reader who raised readers.  I always suspected she encouraged reading because she figured it would keep us quiet.  Couldn't afford to be evicted because of a bunch of unruly, noisy kids.  Most of the other tenants didn't know we existed.

One of the smartest things she ever did was buy us -- and this was in the '60s -- a set of World Book Encyclopedias, a set of Childcraft and the Cyclo-Teacher.  I don't know how she did it, but she always kept the house full of books.

More important, she told me stories at bedtime.  Great stories – I wish I’d written them down.  She remembered many of them from the days of radio – she had even won a scriptwriting contest when she was young.

These were never fluffy, child-friendly stories, either.  My favorite was one about Russell, a little boy, an evil stepmother and a murder.  The details now are blurry, but I think Russell could hear his dead mother’s voice when he sat under a tree.  The leaves would rustle and he could hear her calling his name.  I think her body was under the tree.

Anyway, it was just fabulous and I’d beg her to tell me that one over and over again.

To this day, when I buy a baby shower gift, it’s a collection of books.

[golding76]

just bee,

Your mother was what I would call a "literacy hero."

I had to chuckle because we bought those same sets for our children too. My husband was alive and well, but money was tight.  No matter. I was determined for my children to have Childcraft and the full set of World Book at their disposal.

Also, several times a day -- and at night, of course -- I read to them.  My guidelines were cobbled from what I had read, but I followed a compendium of children's classics that listed the best of children's lit.  It was a volume popular in the early 1980s, and I do not recall the name of the book. 

ETA:  A lovely mother from a neigboring town was a local rep for World Book, and she visited us and made a sale of both sets.  She was able to arrange a pay-over-time plan for us.  That is how we afforded the sets back then.

[just bee]

@golding76

And the added bonus: My siblings were older so they had the inside scoop on the best books to read.  Had a reading list of Newbery Award winners when I was in elementary school.  My sisters had me reading and writing even before I started school.

[zanna]

@just bee and @golding76    This getting way off topic, but you got me remembering what my mother read constantly - True Story magaines!  Ha!  And I was the one hiding in the pantry to read!  

Found this on ebay and it looks soooo familiar ...

[Oznell]

@just beeand @golding76, with us, it was Collier's Encyclopedia.  I can still remember the guy who came door-to-door to sell it to us.  He was a Brit, named "Colin Jefferson".   He and my Dad talked up a storm.  Those books were the light of my childhood!  I had a hideout I could climb up to with a pillow and flannel sheet-- it was the top of a linen cupboard in the hallway, but to me it was a treehouse of fun.  And I could read, read, read.

Ha, ha, @zanna, very cute!