Can you remember the first book you ever read, besides the Dick/Jane/Tag books from first grade? I can, and loved them so much I saved them. I firmly believe that if you can find a book that actually interests a child, something they are passionate about, they will learn to love (or at least tolerate) reading. In my case, humor was what spoke to me as a 6 year old. My dad was a big reader and I saw him read daily. He also loved (and still does!) to peruse the book section anytime we went to one of the “big” (at least back then) stores in our town. One day while out shopping with him, I spotted the series of books that would forever hook me on reading.
Yes, on one of those fateful shopping trips, the Family Circus series by Bil Keane caught my eye and would hold my attention for many years to come. These books were about your average family with 4 children and consisted of simply a drawing with a humorous one-liner on each page that was family friendly and amusing enough to have me chuckling page after page. There were no vibrant colors in the book, just black and white cartoons with words. It didn’t matter. I loved these books and couldn’t wait for Friday afternoons at school when we would have “Silent Reading” time so I could bring one of these from home and enjoy it.
There were many, many books in the Family Circus series, and I’m pretty sure I have each one. If not, then I have almost all of them. I’m anticipating that by next summer, E.B. will be just learning to read. I can’t wait to break out my collection of these books and share them with him. I hope he will love them just as much as I did.
I LOVED Family Circus as a child. I remeber reading them in the “jokes” section of the newspaper. I never knew they had all the cartoons in books. I would have loved those too. I also like reading the Archies Digest. They still have them and have bought them for my kids. I don’t think they quite “get” the Archies, but they do Family Circus.