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7 Children’s Books that Teach What We Should Have Been Learning All Along
It’s happened. I’ve officially crossed the threshold into grouchy grown-up. I never thought I’d be here, and wow, is this weird, but here I am. I am standing in my kitchen, throwing together what I can for dinner when I hear something ridiculous and uneducational coming from the television, and I think to myself, “What is this garbage my child is watching?”
Sigh. It happens, I guess.
And my solution doesn’t fall far from my own parents’ suggestions from years past when they overheard me watching something they deemed unworthy of my time and brain cells…
“Go read a book.”
This is an ethos that has seen us through a great deal. More than once have I distracted my daughter with “Let’s practice your letters,” and “What did your teacher read to you today?” This is commonly followed by “Let’s pick out a new one,” and we sit criss-cross-applesauce on the floor in front of her bookshelf side by side.
Among the dozens of hand-me-downs and Christmas gifts and thrift store finds, there are a handful I’ve hoarded from my own learning-to-read days that somehow didn’t manage to find their way into any yard sale boxes or the shelves of my two younger brothers. Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel is a classic I still love that addresses…
