PHOTO COURTESY OF NANCY DOOREN

I love books. I'm addicted to them. Old, new, and in-between, they are all precious to me. I've been hooked on books ever since I first learned to read. I learned early, I think, mostly because my mother read to us all the time when we were growing up. She would often read from her third grade reader, which I loved, because it had all these really nice old color illustrations, and the stories were just fascinating to me--there were magical stories about princesses, fairies, and trolls under bridges, and stories about historical happenings, too, like the very first Thanksgiving. There were poems in that book, and songs. When I was in third grade myself, we were living in San Francisco, and my mother would take us to the library and leave me reading on a little bench in the children's area while she took my little sisters with her and went to look for books in the adult section. I found the most marvelous book in that library! It's called "The Magician's Nephew" by C.S. Lewis, and it is part of the Narnia chronicles. I LOVED that book and borrowed it from many libraries over the years. When I found out later on that it was part of a whole series of books about Narnia, I was in heaven! I remember applying for my very first library card when I was in fourth grade, at the Panorama City Library in the San Fernando Valley in southern California, where we'd moved; I treasured that card! I visited that library and checked many, many books out over the years, until I grew up and left home. Now, one of the very first things I do when I move to a new city is to go and get a library card. (And I've moved a lot over the past 15 years!) I read to my children all the time when they were growing up, and now it's so rewarding to see that my children have made it a priority to read to their little ones, too. I love reading to my grandchildren, also, and it makes me so happy that all of the older ones learned to read early and are now very advanced readers. Books open up whole new worlds to children, I think, and there is nothing more satisfying to me now than to curl up with a good book and a cup of tea and lose myself in another time and place.

QUOTES ABOUT BOOKS AND READING:

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers." ~Charles W. Eliot

"A book is like a garden carried in the pocket." ~Chinese Proverb

"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend." ~Paul Sweeney


"Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book." ~Christopher Morley


"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." ~Groucho Marx