My friend Nia, a young mother, writes from upstate New York:
John loves to have me read to him, and a few weeks ago he realized that the paperbacks on the bookshelves are also books, same as his colorful (and un-rippable) board books. Our books are stored in horizontal stacks to save space, and he started pulling them out and flipping through them. Once I sat down on the floor and spread his books out so he could choose one for me to read, and he looked around the destruction he'd created on the floor and handed me Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. I put it back on the shelf and said maybe he'd like something ... shorter. He thought for a moment and chose Gogol's Dead Souls, then did his little mummy's-going-to-read-to-me-now body wiggle plus giggle. So what the heck, I read three pages and then he wandered off to get Goodnight Moon.
