Reading Moms

When books choose us

By Kara Madden

During times of stress or change, I have always turned to books for comfort. They're the one thing that can reliably relax me. So it was no surprise the public library was one of my first stops when I moved back home to Boston from the southwest. I'd had a difficult few weeks of house hunting and trying to get the family settled in a city that felt very different from the one I'd left behind six years before.

My first attempts at grabbing a good read were undermined by trips to the children's room. The kids were too energized by their new environment to allow more than a longing glance at the adult fiction section. On my third visit, circumstances allowed me to slip away.

I quickly scanned the shelves of some of my favorite authors -- Jhumpa Lahiri, Jonathan Franzen –- and grabbed the first unfamiliar titles that crossed my path. I returned home with "The Namesake," "Strong Motion," and "The Red House" (by Sarah Messer -– snagged on my retreat from the L's).

Perhaps it was coincidence, or perhaps it was that the library is located just miles from downtown Boston, but, much to my unexpected delight, all three books took place in Massachusetts.

"Red House" is a nonfiction narrative about the oldest continuously lived-in house in New England. Both "The Namesake" and "Strong Motion" describe, in detail, streets and cities just miles from my home. During a time when I was feeling alone, detached, and lost every time I got in a car, these books helped ground me and provide a sense of place. They reminded me why I decided to return home.

What unexpected comforts have books brought you?

Kara Madden lives just outside of Boston, Massachusetts with her husband, preschool-aged son, and toddler daughter.

Library treasures

By Sarah Rachel Egelman

Every week my 2 and a half-year-old daughter, along with the woman who cares for her while I am at work, goes to the library for storytime. Afterward, she is allowed to browse and read and pick books off the shelf, selecting some to take home. When I come home on those afternoons I am always excited to see what she has selected. Excited and, I admit, nervous. 

Some of her favorite books (and, like her mom, she is a bookworm: she has several books memorized and reads them to us all the time) are not ones I really like. It isn't that they're awful, it's just that I find them dull, or unoriginal, or the illustrations are less than attractive. I would never insult her choices: reading, even to a toddler, is about personal preferences and is an opportunity to learn and explore. Still, on library days I hope she brings home some of my favorite authors and illustrators, as well as some of her own. 

What I really like is when we both fall in love with a book together, a book whose pictures and words we can lose ourselves in, a book that transports the two of us to a new, perhaps faraway place, or one that gives us something to talk about all week (and long after).

Here are some of our recent favorite library finds.

• We love Molly Bang! For almost a year "Ten, Nine, Eight" was a favorite bedtime story. Recently, my daughter checked out "In My Heart". I really love the funky pictures, not to mention the story (more of a poem, really) about a working mom who loves her job but always keeps her son "in her heart" when she is away. It is really beautiful.      
  
• "Flyaway Katie" by Polly Dunbar is also a cool and unique book. It's a short tale about Katie, who is a bit bored and a bit gray and thinks the bright picture on her wall would be a better place to be. So, with a fancy outfit and some imagination she manages to spend the afternoon there until it is bath time.

The past two weeks Lilith has come home with books by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. First was "Look! Look! Look!" written with Linda K. Freidlaender. The illustrations remind me of Clare Beaton in this story of three mice who take a painting and deconstruct it visually in order to understand shapes, colors, patterns and other components. This week she brought home "Pumpkin Day," which is full of imagination and discoveries.

It is, of course, far to early to say if Lilith and I will have the same taste in literature. But, I am excited to watch her grow as a reader. She already likes poetry (Robert Louis Stevenson and Mother Goose!) but will she find the magic of e.e. cummings appealing? Will she discover Vonnegut and Kerouac in high school? Will she, as a grown women, dive head and heart in Rushdie and Rhys, Austen and Kafka, just like me?

Most likely we will share some of the same reading passions while each having our own unique tastes.

In any case, I am proud she is off to a good start, and that she is already a great patron of the library.

Sarah is a community college instructor and freelance book reviewer who lives in New Mexico with her husband and daughter.