Editorial Column: Love, Tradition and Reading

 — by Margie Doyle — 

Girls in the background and boys up front love reading books!

Those of us who love reading know all that is unsaid when someone confesses, “I love to read.”  It’s one of the great pleasures in life and truly a key to opening our imaginations.

In my family, I follow the tradition of my great-aunt Eileen, who lived by herself in a grand old Victorian house in San Francisco. She kept the family history, wrote letters on onion-skin paper in distinctive blue fountain-pen ink, and gave books, usually way beyond our years, to all her many young relatives at Christmastime.

Now I’m the one known to give books as presents. I’ll wrap them up and suggest trading — for books are as subjective as art — but now, as we exchange presents and good wishes, my siblings, adult children and the grand children know that they can count on some weird or wonderful book from me.

Maybe it’s not so much the love of reading as surrender to the consumption pressures of modern holidays that motivated me, one year at Christmas, to choose three of my favorite book “beauties” to wrap in gift paper and put under the Christmas tree as presents for my children. One of them, the eldest, “outed” me, remembering seeing the book in the bookshelves. That book had many messages, including the ones wrapped up in giving, or “gifting” it.

Now, choosing books to give is one of the great pleasures of my holiday season.

For those of us who love books and want to pass that gift on to the younger ones in our lives, a serendipitous opportunity awaits today and tomorrow in the school library. There, the PTSA (Parent-Teacher-Student Association) officers have installed the Scholastic Book Fair,  where children and the public can browse and select a huge variety of books. The Book Fair is open to all from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. today, Wednesday, and tomorrow, Thursday, Dec. 12.

Last night, the Book Fair had an evening party, starting at 5:30.  Kids, parents, teachers and the public browsed, chatted, scanned books, and played. Santa and Mrs. Claus even dropped in!

Here’s what I got and why:

The Wheels on the Bus by Pete the Cat, for my son to read to my grandson, for this was one of the first songs that baby heard as he cried through colicky nights. I might even get my two-year-old grandson to share the piano bench with me to accompany us.

The Mom’s 100 Cookbook for my niece who has two small children and is a great mom and could use some non-threatening recipes to make mealtimes rewarding for her.

The Fox Walked Alone, a “prequel” to the story of Noah’s Ark to introduce our Judeo-Christian heritage to my pre-school nephew.

30 days Has September: Cool Ways to Remember Stuff  for my 15-year old niece who struggles in school, but is meeting the challenge and will enjoy the little tricks of rhyming to remember facts and formulae, not to mention spelling!

Mouseton Abbey for my daughter-in-law who loves new fiction and the Masterpiece Theater soap-opera series, “Downton Abbey.” This book combines line drawings and photos of knitted mice in a clever, new way that she’ll appreciate when she shares this book with her children.

Guinness World Records 2014 with a computer application to make it three-dimensional (I don’t get it either) for my two grandnephews, four years apart. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll like looking at this book together and think it’s cool.

Many of the books are between $5 and $10. All of them are intriguing and colorful. Browse the tables for Young Adult favorites, sports, science and pop-up books. Christmas, Hannukah, and even Eid stories are there, as well as twists on old “classics” such as The Gingerbread Bear.

The Book Fair supports the school’s PTSA programs such as roller-skating and snack packs and emergency kits for each classroom.

Start a new Christmas tradition, whether there are any children in your household or not, and linger awhile at the PTSA Book Fair. Come by at lunchtime or right after school to see the happy mayhem as the kids wander through this reading wonderland. If you fear what the internet has brought to our reading culture, it’s a restorative.

It will make you happy, and if you love books, it will be a gift to yourself too.