A Celebration of Reading

March 2 marks the birthday of Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.  Since 1997 the NEA has marked this date with "Read Across America" events in schools, libraries, and museums as a way to celebrate and encourage reading.

Here in Wells, Maine, the Wells Elementary School hosts a Celebration of Reading Day on the first Friday in March.  Guest Readers are invited to visit a classroom and read some of their favorite books to the students.  It's a day I always eagerly look forward to; the only problem being deciding which of my favorite books I would read.

Today I read to a great group of students in Mrs. Guerrette's 4th grade class and selected an excerpt from The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  The Little House books were childhood favorites, and for many reasons The Long Winter is one of my favorites.  It recounts the events in the Ingalls family during the winter of 1880-1881, and how they nearly starved due to the fact that the trains couldn't get through with supplies (to read more about that winter, click here).

My favorite part of the book is towards the end.  It's April, and the blizzards continue to rage on. The family is subsisting on coarse brown bread, and is burning hay to keep warm.  Laura is dragging through the days of cold and hunger and darkness, but Pa keeps up a positive outlook for his family.  "It can't beat us!  It's got to quit sometime and we don't.  It can't lick us.  We won't give up."  Laura goes to bed a bit more optimistically, and in the middle of the night, 

"Laura heard the wind.  It was still blowing furiously but there were no voices, no howls or shrieks in it.  And with it there was another sound, a tiny, uncertain, liquid sound that she could not understand...The little sound that she heard was a trickling of waterdrops.  The eaves were dripping.  Then she knew...The Chinook was blowing.  Spring had come.  The blizzard had given up; it was driven back to the north."

Every year about this time, I start to feel a little like Laura, thinking that I can't take much more of the snow and the cold and the dark.  But then, one day I leave at 5:00 and it's still light out.  The crocuses start peeking up at the edge of my foundation.   The wind still blows, but it's warmer and gentler, and the giant snowbanks in my backyard start to recede. Whenever the winter starts to feel a bit too long, I think of the Ingalls family, and appreciate the fact that despite the blizzards, I still live in a nice, warm house, and can get whatever food I need.  It also helps to remember that just when winter feels like it's gone on too long, the Chinook appears and takes it away.

I want to thank Mrs. Guerrette and her students for listening to me today.  It was a great pleasure to share one of my favorite books with you and to  remember that spring is just around the corner.