This spring I was packing up some books to take to the thrift store. When my daughter Marcie returned from her travels in Asia, and was getting ready to leave for Vancouver, I showed her two books I was going to dispose of. Her objection caught me off guard.
"Mom, those are books I read when I was young that made me think about traveling to the countries I just came from; you can't get rid of those books!"
One was a set of two books called "Families of the World", and the other was a coffee table picture book about planet earth, with very vivid photos of our beautiful planet. As I was thinking about this incident, it made me realize that these books had planted signifant seeds of wonder and curiousity in my child's heart that eventually took her to some of the places she had once discovered in a book that was in our house.
As she set off for life in Vancouver, those books were packed with her belongings. I am glad that I wasn't hasty in my quest to get the books out of my way. This was a reminder to me that we should never underestimate the influence of the literature that we bring into our homes.
