Brighter Reader

My granddaughter toddles across the carpeted area of her hardwood living room floor and lunges at me as I sit in the big brown “old man’s chair” her mother gave to me. Myah hands me the book she has selected from the reading corner Lauren has crafted in her room, and I pull her onto my lap; we start to read one of many books of the day, an exercise in exploration that we both enjoy.
Myah is likely to become a reader, as is her mother, and her aunt and uncle, my two other children. She is surrounded by books in a house that sighs with delight under the joyful burden of books. She has brought her mother with her to live with me, and as she big-foots about the first floor (she is a 16-month-old stomper) she assigns for me — her weekday caretaker-slash-Cool Papa (grandfather) — the job of collecting the books she has strewn about the rooms. I gather “I Like Myself,” and “Mary Had A Little Glam,” and “I Wish You More” and stack them on top of the four weighty books that celebrate painters on the table that sits stolidly in front of the long red couch.
I have pictures — prints and slides — that show all three of my children at a young age, holding books, reading. Experts in child development say that reading to children when they are young will help them to become readers as they grow. While this may be true, I have no idea how I became a reader, as did my first brother and my sister. We have no memories of our parents reading to us, but every Saturday morning we three would rise, eat and dress and walk to the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, Penn., to the Carnegie library. We would spend most of the day there, reading whatever books we liked, or were permitted to read at our age: 8, 7 and 6 years old. Six years or so later, I would be working as a page in the closed stacks of the University of Pittsburgh library, and carting home books scheduled to be discarded. My first daughter claims that I chastised her for trying to sell her books at a yard sale, telling her that “books are to be kept, forever.”
Jennifer Delgadillo, an artist whom I met at my favorite cidery, is the Content Marketing Specialist for Early Learning Indiana, an organization dedicated to providing “leadership, advocacy and early childhood education services to … improve the early learning landscape in Indiana.” She was kind enough to include me in the “Brighter Readers Book Crew,” a monthly collection of reading suggestions for children up to 5 years old that she compiles from the submissions of “a group of early education professionals, child advocates, parents and book-loving experts that want to share their love of stories and books with families all across the state.” The crew makes suggestions based on suggested themes. When I see the theme, I go into Myah’s room and rummage through her books, looking for a match. If I cannot find one, I ask my eldest to look in her children’s libraries, which have books that I have given them.
I am a reader, never mind how it came about, and a “book pusher.” I send books to my nieces and nephews, lend books to my friends and buy books to read and share with a child on my lap, a child named Lisa, or Lauren or Christopher or Xavion, Imani or Myah, the impatient one who demands of me that I help her to become a brighter reader.

cjon3acd@att.net