Dogs Don't Wear Sneakers

While working in the elementary school library the other day, I took note of some of the book titles for beginning readers.  Long gone are the Dick, Jane and Spot books that were around when I was a beginning reader. After all, you can watch Spot run just so long.  Now, the beginning readers have an amazing array of fun books to choose from.  For instance:

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
Never Ride Your Elephant to School by Doug Johnson
Never Mail an Elephant by Mike Thaler
Dogs Don’t Wear Sneakers by Laura Numerof
The Flea’s Sneeze by Lynn Downey
Never Give a Fish an Umbrella by Mike Thaler.

These book titles would tempt anyone to pick them up and start reading.  And the kids do read.  You can see how much they love books by the way they groan when told the library will be closing for the summer.  Every class period, kids are lined up waiting to check out the book(s) they’re taking home to read. I see this and am encouraged about our country’s future.  Dick, Jane and Spot have left the building.

Speaking of books, I’ve started sorting and packing for our upcoming move.  So far, all I’ve done is one bookcase.  Every book I pick up has to go in one of two boxes--take it with us or put it in a yard sale. It has taken me hours just to go through those few shelves, looking at all my “friends” and deciding their fate. Autographed books by Buddy Ebsen, Mike Huckabee, and local authors, should command a higher price at a yard sale.  And there is yet another bookcase to sort through. A third bookcase contains just photo albums.  Nothing to sort, they’re all going with us.

Today’s Quote:  How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. George Washington Carver