Giving thanks...

Gratitude is our sweet acknowledgment of the Lord’s hand in our lives;

it is an expression of our faith.

--Bonnie D. Parkin

I love this quote because I remember realizing for the first time that gratitude is part of faith in God. But that has nothing to do with what I'm thankful for tonight.

You'll probably think this is crazy unless you know me. Even then, it's a little weird. Tonight we went to see the local high school production of Seussical the Musical. One of the young women in my ward had the lead, you see. They did a fine job. Excellent, really. But that's beside the point. I was sitting between Ammon and Nathan and watched them as they recognized even tiny tidbits of Seuss from all the different stories. Ammon was a little annoyed by the way they changed some stories so that they could mesh them all together. He reminded me of me watching Harry Potter. Again, I'm getting off subject. I watched the high school musical and thought about Dr. Seuss.

So, as the story goes, Dr. Seuss thought that Dick and Jane primers were boring. He decided that children would enjoy the process of learning to read if their books weren't so dull. So, he wrote "The Cat in the Hat." Some book critic (Ellen Goodman) described it as "a little volume of absurdity that worked like a karate chop on the weary little world of Dick, Jane and Spot." I've always loved that description.

Today I raise my kids on Dr. Seuss and those who followed after him: Sandra Boynton, Mem Fox, Mo Willems, Don and Audrey Wood, Kevin Henkes, Marcia Vaughan, Eric Carle, Judy Schachner, and Judith Viorst. I could probably think of more of my favorite authors if I stood up and walked over to the bookshelf. But those are the ones that came immediately to mind without effort. I love picture books. I think that some of the best artists alive today make their living by illustrating picture books. I am amazed at the complexity that goes into the simplest children's book--when it's well-written, that is. We have a remarkable selection of really, really good picture books available to us. It makes learning to read more fun. It makes reading aloud more fun. Which, for me, makes parenting more fun. And to think it all started with a cat in a hat.

Seriously, one of my little sorrows about having children grow up is when they grow out of these read aloud books. We almost never read Sandra Boynton around here anymore (but I'm keeping all her books just in case I babysit a small child who cares).

Anywho (ha, ha. Who. That's a Seuss-reference right there. Did you get it?), I am absolutely grateful (no matter how silly it sounds to say it out loud) for Dr. Seuss and all of the good authors and illustrators of children's books. I love to read aloud!