Every Book Is New

Lazy, hazy days of summer reading. Everyone should experience it. What did I read when I was a child? It was a summer tradition to re-read Little Women by Louis May Alcott and cry over the loss of Laurie and death of Beth. And read every new Nancy Drew and Childhood of Famous Americans biography. It was hammock- reading under old walnut trees that sometimes dropped a green walnut into the hammock. My mother had taught in a one room school house and she supported the idea that reading was an acceptable escape from chores until the cows had to be milked.

But what entices kids to read today? Charlotte’s Web’s popularity has been enhanced by a movie, The Borrowers still live under the floor, Ramona the Pest still gets into trouble, and Nancy Drew has been resurrected as a movie. But what to recommend that is "new." Ask a librarian—they read, review and order hundreds of the newest, best, most fun and award winning books. But when it comes to kids, every book they find is new, it just may be "old" to us. I once was in a library where a young patron exclaimed, "Oh a new Louisa May Alcott book!" She didn't know and didn't care that the author had been dead for over 100 years, the book was new to her.