“Ilana Kurshan explores the closeness forged when family life unfolds against a backdrop of reading together. Kurshan, a mother of five living in Jerusalem, at first struggles to balance her passion for literature with her responsibilities as a parent. Gradually she learns how to relate to reading not as a solitary pursuit and an escape from the messiness of life, but rather as a way of teaching independence and forging connection. Introducing her children to sacred and secular literature-including the beloved classics of her childhood-helps her become both a better mother and a better reader.”
Children of the Book is a blend of the love of reading and the importance of getting children interested in reading at an early age. Ilana Kushan describes her approach to getting her children to look at books while she’s reading to them.
I started reading to Patrick and Katie in Children’s Hospital the day after they were born. Our house always had dozens of books for them to look at…and in later years, read. And, of course, I set a Good Example by reading a lot in their presence and helping with their Homework. Patrick could read when he was 3 years old. Katie could read when she was 4 years old. Both of my kids went Kindergarten knowing how to read, knowing their colors, knowing their address, and being able to count to 100. Big advantage!
In this time of cell phone addiction, reading is suffering. I can’t imagine trying to read a book on a cell phone. I occasionally read an ebook on my iPad, but I prefer a Real Book. How about you? Do you remember when you first learned to read? What were your reading preferences? GRADE: B
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: Paradise lost. Genesis: Sunset at the dawn of time. Trailing clouds of glory
By the light of the moon
Far from the tree
Going, going, gone
Serious silliness
Babel builders and beyond
Tell me a Yitzvi
Running away
The set table
Wild about books
Exodus: The journey to reedom. Signs and wonders
The top ten commandments
Left to their own devices
The unicorn and the scroll
A series of their own
Bare ruined choirs
Leviticus: The shrine of the book. Pilgrimage to the library
The bad mother
The Menorah tattoo
The tent of meeting
Happily ever after
Sacrificing the Little Prince’s sheep
The miniature shrine
Numbers: Beezus and Corona. Panic, plunder, pandemic
Revealing the end
Quimby crock-pot and the Egyptian meat pots
The unreliable narrator
Sit here for the present
Deuteronomy: Moses’s memoir. An incandescent mind
The bus driver who wanted to be God
The kind family
The sense of an ending
Weaning my children all over again
Conclusion: The promised land
Acknowledgments
Reading recommendations
Notes
My stories of reading would make up a memoir of its own, and I bet yours would too.
Dan, you are so right! My reading journey–and I’m still on it!–is a long and winding road…
Deb, Dr. Seuss, Harold Robbins, and Evan Hunter make for an impressive list of reading influences!
My mother taught me to read by the time I was three. She took me to get a library card—and the first book I checked out (and read in my own) was THE CAT IN THE HAT (a relatively new book at the time). From that moment on, reading became a central pillar of my life. When I was about six, my mother was reading THE CARPETBAGGERS (again, a fairly new book then), and I idly flipped through it and realized that books didn’t need illustrations to tell a story. The first “adult” book (in tone, style, and intended audience) I read was Evan Hunter’s MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS when I was 11, very much a mid-century opus, but containing the literary device that I still love to this day: the slowly-revealed “shocking revelation”. The book is a sentimental favorite, and I still reread it from time-to-time.
But did you notice the word “proxy,” Deb, Jackie wants to know.
I was about seven or eight when I cracked (used advisedly) open my parents copy of Robbins’s THE BETSY, that they might’ve bought or might’ve received as a pass along/gift since they were big on auto-racing, had actually raced as a team and my father did a lot of sports-car racing up through my infancy, when my uncle borrowed their Jaguar and got into an accident which totaled it. I found the description of semen tasting like “sweet heavy cream” memorably unlikely, even well before producing any of my own.
My mother was always a big reader. Can’t remember what I read first, but even in the early grades I remember poring through the Scholastic catalog to pick out books every month. Like Bill Crider, I read movie tie-ins or books that were turned into movies, like OLD YELLER and (yes, I read it all) BEN-HUR: A Tale of The Christ by General Lew Wallace, first published in 1880.
I remember HORTON HATCHES AN EGG being the first Doctor Seuss book I read.
My mother subscribed to Readers Digest Condensed Books around 1954, and I can still use looking through them and reading several: THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY (another movie!), THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT, THE YEAR THE YANKEES LOST THE PENNANT (turned into DAMN YANKEES, of course; the last two were in the Spring 1955 edition). She also had a bunch of Perry Mason books, all of which I read.
HORTON HATCHES THE EGG, well before hearing a Who. Here’s an early WB cartoon of THE EGG: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x696ka9 (some strobing in parts of the transfer).
Jeff, my parents subscribed to over a dozen magazines. LIFE, LOOK, TIME, NEWSWEEK, SATURDAY EVENING POST, READERS DIGEST, etc. kept me and my siblings busy reading.
My parents started me on Little Golden Books and Dr, Seuss (GREEN EGGS AND HAM, THE CAT IN THE HAT, etc.) when I was three, reading them to me at first and having me read to the by the time I was four. They always had books around, my father’s leaning toward sf and my mothers to some extent to crime fiction, so of course I was most particularly drawn to horror and some gentler fantasy. I hit the libraries hard as soon as I was aware of them, read a lot of Newbery winners and shortlisters, and was always able (thanks to folks) to order heavily from Scholastic. Read most of my Dell Yearlings and similar lines (Dell Laurel Leaf, Harper Trophy, etc.) in classroom libraries–my middle class schools had shelves of them, and older Scholastics–and in the public and school libraries.
Bieary eyes and clumsy fingers this morning.
Todd, we had plenty of Golden Books in our house. My mother read to us daily.
My father was not a reader (except for the newspaper); he started out as a farmer and I remember one old book on the diseases of cows but I don’t remember him opening it. My mother read occasionally, usually popular fiction of the 1950s. My paternal grandfather had a whole slew of cheap mystery reprints from the better-known authors. My mother’s grandmother (who raised her) was a great reader who read who read all 50 volumes of DR. ELIOT’S FIVE FOOT SHELF OF BOOKs (a.k.a. the HARVARD CLASSICS) from start to finish. My sister (three years older) devoured novels about horses, especially the Black Stallion books. The reading bug landed firmly on my brother and I, and we both immersed ourselves liberally with science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels books. He had a thing for the Tom Swift Jr. books, but I, being a full year older, found them too juvenile. (I still do, although as an adult I gleefully read all of the original Tom Swift series.) Mt favorite book when I was younger was THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER, which I would read at least twice a year. I devoured the Hardy Boys and felt that Nancy Drew was a turnip brained fathead, an opinion I passed on to my daughters. By fifth grade I was into Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason mysteries, followed swiftly by Dame Agatha’s puzzlers. By eighth grade I was a regular reader of EQMM, the only mystery magazine with regular distribution in my area. Around the same time I hooked into the 87th Precinct mysteries of Ed McBain. And then there was science fiction. Actually horror. The old Ballantine paperbacks (Zacherley, et al.), Wollheim’s MACABRE READER, Conklin’s IN THE GRIP OF TERROR, and — most especially — the stories of Robert Bloch. Bloch was probably my major gateway to science fiction. And the science fiction magazines, AMAZING and FANTASTIC at first (again, distribution was spotty back in those days), then GALAXY, IF, F&SF, and (finally) ASTOUNDING/ANALOG. Those magazines which were not on my local newsstands flourished aplenty in the used books stores, thank God.
As you know, George, I still read vociferously. Anything and anywhere, but I have a fondness for old pulps and paperbacks, including some of the harder to find and out-of-the-way items. Recent goodies that have come my way include the collected stories of Max Spitzkopt, the Yiddish Detective (first published in Vienna in 1908 and now finally available in English), five volumes of the WINSTON-SALEM IN HISTORY series written by Manly Wade Wellman (he wrote six of the thirteen volumes and I finally managed to find all six, only to have one of them cancelled by a the bookseller, PTAH!), and MYSTERIES OF ASIA, a rare collection of stories by Achmed Abdullah (published in England as part of the Phillip Allan “CREEPS” series in 1935 and never reprinted).
And then there’s that yahoo from Tonawanda who keeps tempting me to buy more and more books.
Life is good.
Jerry, my parents also subscribed to TWO daily newspapers. Reading material was always abundant in the Kelley household.
Nota bene: N. K. Jemisin will be the next SFWA GrandMaster, btw, for those following speculative fiction events. She has already been a Macarthur Fellow, named in 2020 for the genius grant.
An excellent, verging on not being a pun, title on this one, George, and thanks for the pointer.
Todd, I was always amazed at some of my students who arrived to College without knowing how to read. When I was working in the General Motors Engine Plant as a consultant…same thing. About a third of the workforce could not read.
We moved to Brooklyn when I was 9. I discovered that our landlady’s daughter had the whole Oz series in hardback in the basement, so I borrowed them and read them straight through one after the other. Maybe that was the first of many series I’ve read since then, in order whenever possible.
Jeff, my first series was TOM SWIFT, Jr. followed by THE HARDY BOYS, NANCY DREW, and RICK BRANDT.
Though I don’t remember at what age I started I also was an avid reader, using several sources:
My parents’ library. They were members of a book club where you got a book every 3 months.
Pulp from friends, mainly The “Westerns” by Karl May and stuff with Tom Prox and Bill Jenkins.
A family friend’s library, Edgar Wallace and Agatha Christie and comics which they bought for their granddaughter – mainly Disney’s Micky Mouse but also old fairy tales turned into comics. Nobody was allowed to take those books out of the house so I often visited them in the afternoon and read, read, read until it was time to go home for dinner.
The city library. First all the interesting stuff – there wasn’t so much but then they got every two weeks a box of translated US books from the America House – Cannery Row, A Streetcar named Desire etc. – lots of interesting books. The librarian let me take home many books which were supposed to be read by adults only – a wonderful woman!
My mother often came after 10 pm into my room and told me to stop reading. When I heard her I switched of the light but she touched the lampa and knew it was still warm …
As a teenager I also had the chance to visit the bookstoree where a friend of my mother worked so I could read SF paperbacks there in the afternoon.
Wonderful times!
Wolf, when I was growing up, many stores sold books: drug stores, department stores, convenience stores, even grocery stores. Now, if you want a book, you have to go to BARNES & NOBLES to buy it.
From my Facebook memories of fifteen years ago: “Just watched The Last Airbender with Mark and Erin. Marl was impressed. Erin read another warriors book.” Erin was eight then and in love with reading; she now reads at least 200 books a year. Mark was ten but did not really get into reading until much later; his Christmas list this year has 122 books on this — nothing else, just books.
Jerry, “just books” sounds ideal for me!
George, I forgot that I wanted to comment about your statement about not being able to read a book on the phone. I have!
Years ago, when Jackie had her thyroid operation, she mentioned that the doctor did indeed read books on his phone.
I read a lot of books, most these days in fact, on the Kindle. However, when I read a book from the Cloud Library, it doesn’t come on the Kkndle, so I can read on my tablet or the phone. Ditto for books from Libby. The tablet is bigger and easier, but I always have the phone with me, so if I have a little reading time, it’s there.
Jeff, good to know! I’ll give it a try when Patrick brings me the cell phone at Thanksgiving.
I didn’t go to kindergarten and started first grade when I was five! That’s when I learned to read, seeing Spot run! Run, run, run!
Bob, DICK AND JANE ruined reading for me in those early does. I found their antics insipid.
But the art was nice!