Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.
~ Emilie Buchwald ~

Being such a bookworm, I readily confess that there are few pleasures in my world that beat out reading a book, but being read to must be right up there with it.

Most children will have fabulous memories of being snuggled up close to a favourite parent and being read aloud to, and I'd be one of them.  Books have always played such a huge role in my life and I certainly felt their magic from an early age, but my love of being read to didn't end there.

I recall a certain picnic in High Park back in the summer of 1994,  where my now-husband and I spent one of our first dates laying about on a blanket and reading aloud.  That is was "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" that we chose might seem inordinately funny to others, but at the time it had special meaning to us both.   I can close my eyes right now and immediately find myself back there, under the sun-dappled branches of those massive maple trees and listening to the sound of his voice. 

Of course, having two children of my own (aged 7 and 11) has meant many, many more opportunities for reading:  quietly, raucously, in unison even.  Reading on the couch, reading in bed, reading while slurping morning cereal, reading in the bath and on the toilet -- it's all fair game in the K-L household.  Both kids have wildly differing tastes in literature so we have run the gamut of fantasy, humour, graphic novels, tween vampires-lite, exploding butts, girl power, you name it.  We're a family of book sluts who will read it all.

Anyhow, when the clarion call came from the school librarian that they were looking for parent volunteers to come and read from a certain selection of books, I was hooked.  I would be participating in the Ontario Librarys Association's Blue Spruce Reading Program, whereby 10  recently published Canadian children's picture books are read to children in kindergarten through to grade two.    Based on student voting across the province, the best picture book is then selected and the author/illustrator is honoured with the Blue Spruce Award. 

As Madame Sylvie the librarian explained it to me,  I would be reading my book to 16 different classrooms  in that week.   There were a handful of choices left to pick from, so here's how I ended up shilling for a cow to win:

Buttercup's Lovely Day by Carolyn Beck

 She's truly a lovely cow, our girl Buttercup is.  She waxes rhapsodically on the joy of feeling a bee land on her nose, on lazy langourous summer days.  She also extolls the making of cow pies, chewing her cud and worrying if a fart would startle a passing skunk.  All in all, great stuff to read aloud to the school-age bunch!

I am looking at all those upturned faces that watch me with round eyes as I read to them from a rocking chair, or the edge of their teacher's desk, or while standing in place stomping my feet and making lowing sounds.  And now it finally seems to me that I have reached the point in my life where my true joy is found in the act of reading with passion and fervour to others.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen
from one to another mind.
~ James Russell Lowell  ~