Children's Books

I love reading. Getting new insights from the writings of great thinkers, learning new vocabularies and observing how the sentences are beautifully written are all to me great pleasures. Sometimes after what feels like a boring or disappointing day, simply reading a good article gives me a sense of accomplishment and the day doesn't feel so bad anymore.

Being a reading enthusiast, though, my interest in fiction has decreased with time. As I grow older, I find myself fascinated more and more with philosophy and memoirs, and hence for the past few years I've been reading more writings on such topics than I have novels, which were my favorite when I was a teenager. Now, my preference of enjoying fictional works is channeled through watching good movies and TV series, instead.

There is, however, an exception for children stories. When it comes to children's literature, I somehow seem to have the eagerness of a little kid. In fact, most of the books I bought this year were those of collections of children stories, with lovely illustrations on each of their pages.

Not everyday, but once in a while when I'm in the mood for some magic and wild imaginations, I like picking one of the many thick books on my shelf, sit cross-legged on the couch, and then flip my fingers through the colorful pages and feel the child in me jumping with joy. I will pick one or two stories that I haven't read, relishing in its every sentence of sometimes unreasonable words and funny names. When the story ends, I will go back to the beginning to pay close attention to its illustrations. When I decide that I've had enough fun, I close the book and put it back, saving the rest of the stories for another time.

Now, when I was very little, my family lived in a house with a big bookstore nearby. My parents would take us there often and bought my sisters quite a lot of children's books. I, unfortunately, not learning yet how to read, didn't get any share of those precious things. By the time I did learn how to read, or at least pretended to, we had moved out to another part of the city. There was no bookstore nearby. Hence, the old bookshelf in our house is full of children's books belonging to my sisters. None belongs to me.

I once joked with my mom that my enthusiast in children's literature came from an unfulfilled desire to have my own books as a kid. This, of course, is not true. I myself was happier playing with stuffed animals and kitchen sets than with books when I was little.

As a grown up, however, flipping through pages of lovely drawings and simple yet powerful stories somehow gives me pure joy. It reminds me that this old world, which can sometimes seem cruel and unfair and scary, still in fact has in it a big space for kindness, innocence and awe. The very existence of children's books has, at least to me, brought a semblance of a better world. I guess it is also my way of keeping the child in me alive.