Books are the hot topic this week!  Yesterday my blogging friend Claudia at http://mockingbirdhillcottage.com/ wrote a lovely recollection of happy times spent selecting just the right books to carry home from her local bookmobile.  Her readers chimed in with childhood favorites--and almost all of them were the same books I held so dear when I was young!   Among them were the Little House on the Prairie books, the Anne of Green Gables series, the adventures of Trixie Belden and her good friend Honey Wheeler, all of Gene Stratton Porter's books (Laddie and Girl of the Limberlost were my favorites), and one reader even mentioned a series I had loved but forgotten about...Nurse Cherry Ames! 

Then this morning another blogging friend, Karrlin, posted her own blog about books here at  http://poemifyme.blogspot.com/2012/10/do-you-love-books.html.  And meanwhile, a few days ago I started writing today's post with a book theme.  Maybe it's the idea of curling up with a good book by the fireplace now that the weather has turned cold that is drawing us towards our bookshelves, the library, a bookmobile, or for some lucky people, the shelves of the Free Little Library boxes that have caught the interest of a number of homeowners in my neighborhood.  It's a wonderful way to recycle books and provide young people in my area with books they may never have had the chance to read before.  If you would like more information on this great project that is spreading across America, you can read about it at http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/

I simply couldn't write a post about books and my love for reading without thanking my mother for sharing her love of reading with me.  She is as voracious a reader as I am, and many of our conversations are about fictional characters that, much like the bedraggled Velveteen Rabbit, have become real friends.  I, like the lucky little boy in the poem below by Strickland Gillilan, was given the world on a flying carpet of imagination by my mother, and for that, I feel extremely blessed.  Thanks, Mom.



Mother and I, circa 1959

The Reading Mother

I had a mother who read to me Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea, Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth, "Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath. I had a Mother who read me lays Of ancient and gallant and golden days; Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe, Which every boy has a right to know. I had a Mother who read me tales Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales, True to his trust till his tragic death, Faithfulness blent with his final breath. I had a Mother who read me the things That wholesome life to the boy heart brings-- Stories that stir with an upward touch, Oh, that each mother of boys were such! You may have tangible wealth untold; Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be-- I had a Mother who read to me. picture courtesy of http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=439288812775490&set=a.230999346937772.49178.215442228493484&type=1&theater