On March 2 of every year the NEA plans its Read Across America day and asks “every child to be reading in the company of a caring adult” at some point in the day. (The NEA hopes to create a nation of readers through that program it created in 1997. Read Across America is now in its thirteenth year and it is a year-round program that focuses on motivating children and teens to read.)
Another of my Dad’s stories was of a baby brother I never knew. “Your Mama and me hit a man up Athens way one Saturday. Didn’t hurt his car hardly atall, but we were young and didn’t know any better. He said we had to pay five dollars a month ‘til we had paid enough. When your brother, Billy, died...he was just three months old, we missed a payment. When the man came to get his money, we were living in a little one room house. He came in and saw us standing by the kitchen table. On it was Billy’s coffin, littlest wood coffin I ever saw. Well, the man, after looking at us and down at our little boy who looked just like he was asleep, never came again for his money.”
They lived through times of sorrow and it is good for children to know you can live through grief and survive.
This year two movies nominated for an Academy Award were just such movies. Bright Star is a film based on the last three years of the live of poet John Keats. The film Sherlock Holmes was, of course, a mystery romp with the character of Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, both invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
"As a children’s librarian, I always encourage families to create their own stories, which will eventually become their own family folklore. I would also like to suggest that families create and take note of their own “family words.” Every family has them; in our house “Boomala” was the place to go when my parents didn’t want to tell us where we where headed. It might be because the location would generate such excitement that they wanted to keep it a surprise for as long as possible to save their sanity. But it could also be a place that they didn’t want to mention because it was so detestable to the young at heart that they would never get us in the car."