When my son was seven and my daughter was three, I tried to read aloud A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh (Puffin, $3.99; nine and up). Friends told me they'd successfully read classics to their children and I wanted to share my favorite childhood story. My children have never been shy about telling me when they don't like a book and this often happens on the first page, but I was surprised when they wanted me to quit Pooh. I requested that they listen to a chapter before they decided. By the end of the first chapter, they were sure they didn't want me to continue.
"What's wrong?" I wondered. They were surrounded by books, better read to than many children, and willing to sit for a good story. After trying a few of my other childhood favorites, I decided classics didn't endure, or my children were modern readers and I gave up...until last summer.
My daughter got a small stuffed Tigger for her birthday from a friend. I learned she'd fallen in love with a Disney song and chanted it at varying speeds and occasions at school. When I asked her if she wanted to read about the real Tigger, she was eager. This time sharing Pooh was magical and it took me no time at all to discover a child of nine or ten will appreciate the wonder of this classic. She cuddled against me and made admiring, tender sounds about the dearness of the characters. We reread passages we loved that made us think, repeated the sections with pleasing words and talked at length about what the characters represented. Then we went on to read The House at Pooh Corner (Puffin, $3.99) and to listen to recent Milne recordings of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House a Pooh Corner (both $16.95 for 2 tapes) and Now We Are Six, and When We Were Very Young (10.95 for 1 tape) read by Charles Kuralt.
This summer, encouraged by last summer's experience, my daughter and I shared Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth (Knopf, $4.99; ages 10 and up) another one of my childhood favorites which had failed in past years. At the story's beginning, hero Milo "didn't know what to do with himself- not just sometimes, but always." One day he returns from school to find an easy to assemble tollbooth and when he drives through it, Milo finds wild adventures in Dictionopolis, the land of words; Digitopolis, the world of numbers, and many locations in between. The book is filled with wild characters like the Spelling Bee who spells more than he speaks. There are silly word plays like the time Milo makes a speech at dinner and is surprised to find out he has to eat his words. There's life philosophy and tons of punny, funny humor. Milo's on a quest in this nonsensical land to bring back the Princesses of Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason. He's so changed by his travels that when he returns home he's only momentarily disappointed when the tollbooth disappears. As Milo says, "there's just so much to do right here."
Again my daughter and I reread parts that made us giggle, talked about characters long after we'd turned the final page and shared the kind of sweet times I'd once had when I shared books with my mother. I was satisfied knowing classics do last, only my memory of when I'd read them was false. I have a sense my daughter will want to carry on this tradition, only maybe she'll know to wait until her children are old enough to enjoy the titles she's now come to love.