Parental confession time: I’ve hidden books from my children.
(Start shame spiral)
Yes. It’s true.
Don’t get me wrong – I love, *LOVE* reading to my kids. I love snuggling with them in bed. I love watching them become engaged in the story and when they turn the page to find out what happens next. As they get older, I love when they start following along, sounding out words. I love watching them learn to love reading.
However, all my kids had certain books they couldn’t seem to get enough of. We’d read them over and over and over. And over. Despite having a bookshelf jam packed with approximately two billion books, they always chose the same two or three at bedtime. Every night. And after reading these certain books exactly 874,392 times, I couldn’t take it anymore. The books mysteriously disappeared. The kids HAD to pick something new. Sometimes this resulted in a brief stint of tears that the beloved books were lost, but usually the kids bounced back with a new favorite within a few days. And selfishly, their heartbreak wasn’t as important as me losing my sanity over reading that book an 874,393rd time.
Enter the magazine.
Short, concise, and most important, disposable if need be. Brand new fun-sized stories show up to my door each month, perfect for the short attention span of my kids, and even more perfect for my dreams of one and done when it comes to reading out loud. They are basically my savior.
Of course I have to plug Cricket magazines as I grew up with Cricket and my kids are all exploring various titles each month. The stories in all the Cricket titles capture my imagination too – I have to admit, I’ve actually kept a few to re-read to my younger kids as they age up. And I have to tell you, we (me included!) have all learned so much since we started getting them. After recent editions of Ask, Faces and Muse, my daughter found out how much she likes geology, my son discovered a great deal about some cultures in South America that none of us knew anything about, and we all remembered the elements on the periodic table (Well, some of them. A few. Three.).
What I especially love about Cricket magazines though is that the quality is so good that we’ve been known to save and frame some of the illustrations and poems. You can’t do that with books – especially the ones I’ve hidden.
Cricket Media Mama can recite at least 15 children’s books by memory, forwards and backwards. She wonders what important information this has replaced in her brain. Probably the rest of the periodic table.
