When I was pregnant with my first son and decorating his nursery, my husband excitedly built a bookshelf to go with the other furniture. It was a precious little two-shelf unit that he painstakingly measured, cut, sanded, and stained.
Those perfect little shelves held a handful of baby board books on one shelf and a few themed decorations on the other. It looked more like a display than an actual bookshelf. But I always knew I wanted to give my children the pure gift of loving to read, so our collection grew– and fast!
We soon had more books than the shelves could hold (even when my husband built a second bookcase!), but that was never really a problem for me. I knew our collection would grow, but while I expected the quantity of books to increase, what my mama heart wasn’t prepared for was how our collection of books would evolve.
I’ve watched these shelves change along with everything else in our lives as my children grow up before my eyes. Just as the precious nursery decor was swapped out for truck posters– just as the cribs were exchanged for beds– just as their tiny little smocked outfits were replaced by rough and tumble play clothes– their books changed, too.
The dozens and dozens of little board books, designed to withstand the unforgiving grip of determined baby hands, eventually gave way to picture books with bigger pages, elaborate pictures, and more words. We had a massive collection of Little Golden Books! Then, the imaginative stories of the picture books became interspersed with more kid-friendly nonfiction books than I could have ever anticipated, as my kids grew hungry for facts about their favorite vehicles, animals, and the way the world around them worked.
The picture books and nonfiction books soon got new friends– “Step One” and “Level One” style beginning reader books, as my oldest child entered grade school and began to learn how to read. The hardback, skinny spines of the picture books were now accompanied by those thin, flimsy readers with their big fonts and phonetic cadences. It was the first sign of independent reading, and it was simultaneously joyful and heartbreaking to see on the shelves.
And now, the next change: we’re in the world of chapter books. My son and I take turns reading pages to each other from the Magic Treehouse series, Junie B. Jones series, Beverly Cleary books, and whatever catches his eye at the library. We’re suddenly using bookmarks. I’m sharing entire worlds with him that I loved as a child. I was ready to give him this gift– but I wasn’t ready for how fast it seemed to have happened!
I can’t believe the bookshelf in his room is the same one my husband built to hold a few board books– wasn’t that just yesterday? Now, it’s overflowing with an eclectic collection ranging from biographies of athletes to animal encyclopedias to historical fiction stories about the Revolutionary War and more.
But there’s still a few favorite old board books mixed in there… ones that we still love to read together and will keep forever. Because some things never change.
