For ten years Marilyn Green Faulkner has been writing a column for Meridian titled “Back to the Best Books.” Now Marilyn has featured 36 of these great works in her new book, Back to the Best Books. Each of the twelve chapters offers three book selections – great ideas for ward book groups or casual readers who are ready to take it up a notch! Available at amazon.com.
An amazing number of people, it seems, figure out their life’s work very early on. And they find it in a children’s book! From Jay Leno to David McCullough, accomplished authors, entertainers, and other professionals share their favorite children’s book in the volume, “Everything I Need to Know I Learned From A Children’s Book,” by Anita Silvy. Here are a few of my favorites:
Jay Leno: Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. “The more people came, the faster Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne dug.” “That line made sense to me. I was always a show-off.”
Steve Wozniak: Tom Swift. (The author was a pseudonym, “Victor Appleton II.”) “Tom Swift showed me that inventing things might bring many kinds of rewards.” With Steve Jobs he invented Apple I and Apple II
David McCullough: Ben and Me. Discovered his first revisionist historian at age six, in the mouse who lives in Ben Franklin’s house. “In the writing of history and biography, one has to call on imagination – in the sense of transporting oneself into that other time and the lives of those other people, all vanished, distant and different.” McCullough still reads the book to himself and his grandchildren.
Brad Paisley, Country singer: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He loved the character so much that he named his first child William Huckleberry Paisley, to inspire in him a spirit of adventure, of taking chances. “When I wrote the name on the birth certificate I said to Kim, “Keep this pen. This is a reminder to him of the power of the pen. With that pen I changed his life – when I wrote his name down. That is what writers like Mark Twain do; they change people’s lives with the power of the pen.”
Steven Pinker, Scientist: The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. “I still remember the series of little cats nested in a bigger cat’s hat – Cats A, B and C down to Z. That image forced me to think about nested sets, infinitesimals, Zeno’s paradox, and other concepts that I studied much later in mathematics.”
Kathy Bates, Actress. Impunity Jane, by Rumer Godden. “Like her, I wanted the whole world to be open to me. I didn’t want to live like a doll in a dollhouse.”
So what is the message here? The message is to have lots of books around and to spend a few minutes each day reading to whatever child is in your life, allowing the child to find ones to love.
As Kyle Zimmer, director of the First Book program says:
“Whether we are called upon to govern a nation or organize a birthday party for too many children, the key to both surviving our days and cultivating our next generation is many books, well chosen.”
Reading specialists describe a “home run” experience with a book. The first time one becomes completely immersed in a book, it is like that first home run or the first real kiss. We use that as a benchmark for our other reading experiences, and it shapes our lives in more ways than we know. Constant DVD, TV and computer viewing may somehow eliminate that seminal moment. If it never comes, the chance of being a lifelong reader are vastly diminished. And what about that vocation? Will our children find it?
Something to think about.
For a list of one hundred great books for children, go to my blog at backtothebestbooks.com.
