Books I Love

I love books. They wait for me with an unconditional love. Next to my bed, in the kitchen, on the book shelves in the living room and most of them in the unpacked moving boxes in our cellar.

Since we have kids and lived in various countries, we have a happy colorful mess of kids and adults books in many different languages -Dutch, English, Swedish, French, German .. –  laying around the house. I wonder what Mo Willem’s Pigeon would say about that. ‘Don’t let the pigeon mess up your bookshelves’?

It was my husband who made reading a daily business for me. He always reads before going to sleep, just like his mum. A habit I was more than happy to take over. Now, over 15 years later, I can’t remember what I did before going to sleep when I did not read books.

For me, books are inspirational, something to dream away with and a source of knowledge. My favorite books are always in eyesight, just to make sure I don’t forget what I learned from them, or to remember the story that made me laugh or cry. Visual and physical contact with books is very important to me, so I have not warmed up to digital reading yet. But that will change no doubt since my kids use it more and more. Fortunately not to replace reading paper copies, but as an additional and different way of reading.

Since I landed in the US almost a year ago, I fell in love with Dr Seuss and Mo Willems. Their books as well as their famous quotes are a great source of creative thinking for kids AND adults. Whoever can write kids books that are also engaging for parents, is a genius in my humble opinion.

Take for example these ones of Mo Willems:

“The difference between children and adults is that they’re shorter – not dumber.”

or

“The difference between children and adults is that they’re shorter – not dumber.”

and

“A book, being a physical object, engenders a certain respect that zipping electrons cannot. Because you cannot turn a book off, because you have to hold it in your hands, because a book sits there, waiting for you, whether you think you want it or not, because of all these things, a book is a friend. It’s not just the content, but the physical being of a book that is there for you always and unconditionally.”

He may not be Shakespeare or Chekhov, but his quotes show a love for books and kids that is …

…, unconditional.