Classic Children’s Books

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Martha, one of my favorite times of day comes at bedtime when we put our son to bed and we read his library books.

My wife and son spent a great deal of time going to libraries around San Diego.

They are impressive consumers of library books, and we have a stack at any time of 10 to 30 books, as many as they can check out.

That’s great.

Tons of stuff.

So I get to see everything, all the best.

You know, you go to the recommended shelf, and usually the librarians have picked out the stuff that’s just really going to work.

And we’re not quite to chapter books yet.

We still need lots of pictures because he’s not quite four yet.

And it’s a fun time.

But I have to say, as much as I love some of the new books, and you’ve heard me talk about them on the show before,

There are still some classics that I think need to be brought to the fore.

I’m thinking of things like Pippi Longstocking.

Sure.

But I’m also thinking about books like The Wind and the Willows, a classic of British literature, beautifully written.

It’s entirely too long for my son.

But for me, it’s got a perfect cadence.

It’s almost as if it was meant to be read aloud.

And I want to share something from page two.

Right from the start, the book grabs you, right?

This is where Mole realizes that it’s spring outside.

And he’s in his hole trying to do a little spring cleaning.

And finally he says, oh blow, oh bother, and he goes up.

And then the book starts, something up above was calling him imperiously.

And he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the graveled carriage drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air.

So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped,

Working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, up we go, up we go, to the last pop.

His snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.

So from the very start, the scraped and the scratched and the scrabbled and scrooged, it’s wonderful.

But also we start the book with a tiniest sense of discovery.

My son responded very well to this, what I’ve read of the book so far.

A lot of the vocabulary he doesn’t get.

Frankly, there’s vocabulary in there that I don’t get.

It’s from 100 years ago, for one thing.

Well, yeah, imperiously.

I was thinking a four-year-old is going to—

But it makes up for that.

You just accept it.

It’s great.

All that scratching.

So I guess what I’m saying to you, we love libraries.

This is a book, The Wind in the Willows, that you need to check out from the library again for yourself or for your children and have a go.

The old books still work.

They still have power and emotion and movement.

And even though he doesn’t understand all of it, he catches on to words like scrabbled and scratched.

And he understands that there’s a mole involved.

And he understands what’s happening on the river.

And here comes Toad with his fast motor car,

And like all of the best books, you leave the page satisfied,

No matter how much you read.

It’s great. It’s a classic.

It doesn’t always have to be the latest thing, right?

No, it doesn’t.

Well, this is the place where we talk about books and language

And words and how we use them.

Call us, 877-929-9673, if you’d like to talk.

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The address is words@waywordradio.org.