To Read, Perchance to Dream: Passing Reading Down from Generation to Generation
By: The Good Men Project
Tags: Reading, Children, Books, Parenting, Fatherhood

To Read, Perchance to Dream: Passing Reading Down from Generation to Generation

Photo credit: iStock

By Ariel Chesler

As a boy, I could rarely be found without a book on my person. This is the fault of my mother who taught me wordlessly that it is good practice to bring a good portion of one’s personal library everywhere one travels, even for trips to the corner store.

The parlor floor of my childhood brownstone was a forest of books that towered above me even as I grew into a young man. I thought I lived in a library. My own room was filled with books. My roommates were the Narnia series and the Black Cauldron series and the Lord of the Rings series. I lived with Sherlock Holmes and King Arthur and Wonder Woman, all of whom slept next to A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Willows and A Bridge to Terabithia. Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, and Shel Silverstein were present. And Madeline and Eloise and Alice and Peter Pan and Winnie the Pooh and Charlotte and the Little Prince were there too.

I can’t remember when, but at some point I began falling asleep with books. I still do. Sometimes, it was sanctioned. Other times I had a flashlight under the covers and read until sated. In all cases, books were both my fantasy and my comfort. Books were endless possibilities; they were home.

I have two daughters now and, when I read a favorite childhood book of mine to them, it is as joyous as when I first ingested it. I have retained most of my childhood collection of books and they belong to my daughters now.

I have noticed that there are some books I will read to my children mechanically, without thinking. And for that I am sorry. But I make up for it on those good ones. The children’s books that I love allow me to read the words to them in a flow. They have a rhythm and a beat and are well paced and end perfectly.

In my home, we read incessantly. We read at dinner. We read during bath. We’ve read on the train. We’ve read on a bus. Books sometimes accompany my four-year-old daughter to the potty. And sometimes we can’t leave the house until she finishes the book she’s reading.

Recently, we had my four-year-old’s birthday party at her preschool. She was asked whether she wanted me or my wife to read one of her favorite books to the class and she picked me. When the teacher determined that we had a time for a second book, she picked me to read again. Besides the fact that I can now lord this over my wife, I want to believe that this means that my daughter knows how important books are to me and she likes to hear me read.

For some time now, my four-year-old has also been going to sleep with books. Sometimes we fight over how many books she can take into bed. Other times she procrastinates over her choices. And, very often, we have found her asleep with a book on her chest. Or under her arm. Or under her pillow. Or, being that there is a bookshelf nearby, a mess of books scattered on the floor next to her bed.

Now, my 19-month-old, who shares a room with her older sister, will point and demand “book, book” at bedtime. And, so she too must carry books into bed.

One of my favorite recent pictures we have taken of our children shows the two of them sitting on a pile of books shortly after we moved to our new apartment. They are on their own, reading, passing books to each other, contented.

In a recent Frank Bruni column, he discussed the relationships between reading and intelligence and reading and empathy. These are certainly traits I want for my daughters. But, what impressed me most was Bruni’s conclusion that it is through reading that we can hope to repair our “shattered world.”

I know that I have already completed an important job as a parent — -passing on a love of books. Where ever my children go and whoever they become, books will be with them, opening up their minds, filling their hearts, sharing their beds, and hopefully leading them on a path to improve our world.

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The story was previously published on The Good Men Project.

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About Ariel Chesler

Ariel Chesler is an attorney in New York. He lives with his wife and two daughters, and one cat. He is the son of feminist author and psychologist Phyllis Chesler. You can follow him on Twitter @arielchesler or on his tumblr Feminist Dad here: arielchesler.tumblr.com