Do you have a favorite book or two? Have you read it recently? Yeah, me neither. Who has the time, right? There are always so many books that I haven’t yet read, it’s hard to justify spending time reading “old” books. And yet, I encourage my children to re-read their favorite books.

When my oldest son was in Kindergarten, my husband and I read aloud Beverly Cleary’s Ralph Mouse series.

My son was enthralled. He would beg one of us to read “just one more chapter, pleeeeease” to him. Frankly, we were just as delighted with Ralph’s antics as our son was. We hadn’t read the books since we were children ourselves. We finished reading the third and final book one evening just before tucking the kids into bed. The next day I picked up my son from school and on the way home he asked if we were going to start the next Ralph book that night. When I told him that we had read all three books in the series and there weren’t anymore Ralph books, he got tears in his eyes and said, “But, Mom, I’m going to miss Ralph.”

My heart went out to him. I could relate to how he felt. I hate when a good book (or series) ends. But, I knew he needed to understand that it wasn’t really the end.

He and I talked about how much we enjoy certain characters in books we read. How amazing it is that the author creates a character that actually becomes a part of us as we read the book and can remain with us long after we have read the final page. I reminded him that it was easy to visit Ralph whenever he wanted, we could always re-read any or all of the Ralph books.

We did re-read Ralph and then we continued with many, many of Cleary’s other books. Henry Huggins soon became another favorite character in our household and it wasn’t long before Ramona Quimby made an appearance.

                             
Why bring this up now?

My second son is now in Kindergarten. He remembers Ralph and Henry from when we read the books a couple of years ago. But, now he’s old enough to understand them a bit better. We have started reading Henry Huggins aloud in the evenings and he is enjoying them tremendously. He, too, is begging for “just one more chapter, pleeeease”.  He has incorporated Ralph and Henry into his imaginary play world; he cares about these characters and isn’t ready to say goodbye to them. Fortunately, he understands about re-reading. He knows where to find Henry; he knows Henry is just sitting on the shelf waiting for my son to open the book and re-discover the magic of being in Henry’s world.

Reading truly is magic.