Blogging for Books

My boys with a Newfoundland cousin.

Though it shames me to confess it, most developmental milestones are only really exciting the first time. Most childhood "firsts"—the first step, the first word, the first morsel— lose some of the wow factor as they are repeated by younger siblings. I remember exactly the first time my eldest son sat up, vaguely, the first time for my middle child, and I'll just have to make something up to tell the third. It's awful, but it's just the way it is.

But the moment when my kids start seeing alphabet letters as more than a jumble of shapes, the minute they crack the code and the jumble becomes a sound, a word, an idea— that is thrilling to witness every single time.

Patrick and I seldom feel more parental pride and joy than when our boys are flopped over the sofa, lost in books. I deeply believe that a love of reading is the best thing children can have going for them after love and health, and it is often the saving grace of people who lack both. Literacy helps you survive. A love of reading helps you live.

I think it's a great cause for the first Little Rock twestival, a social media get-together to benefit Reach Out and Read Arkansas. If you are in the area, I hope you'll attend, and bring a book to donate for a child in need. If you can't make it, but would like to send some of these books with me, it would make me very, very proud.