Revisiting the Storybooks That Raised Us

Children’s literature and the joy of story time deserve to be preserved, celebrated, and remembered for how they shaped our first understanding of the world. It’s World Children’s Day today, and that got me thinking about storybooks. I grew up in a generation, perhaps one of the last, where storytime was still an integral part of the education system. In fact, when I think about kindergarten, the most prominent memories were peaceful afternoons with our teacher, who, without fail, would always read us a story, complete with special voices for different characters. There was an almost sacred silence to the practice, and being able to calm a whole room of antsy kids with a simple picture book tale was nothing short of a miracle. I also remember evenings spent with my father, who’d read Sesame Street bedtime stories aloud to me. When my younger siblings came into the world, I carried on the practice and read them storybooks too (one about a baby chimp titled Hug, by Jez Alborough, was a particular favorite). There’s an ephemerality to storytime because children eventually grow “too old” for them, or shift from the ones being told the stories to the ones doing the telling—and that’s normal. Yet nowadays, at the expense of sounding like a grandmother, I’m seeing tiny hands grasping big screens instead of these books, and it concerns me for both sentimental and practical reasons.

“Children’s literature and the joy of story time deserve to be preserved, celebrated, and remembered for how they shaped our first understanding of the world.”

авторское резюме: В памяти эпохи чтения младших школьников яркость голоса учителя и уют домашнего чтения остаются символами детства, а переход к экрану вызывает тревогу за сохранение обмена историями и воображения.

Lifestyle Asia — 2025-11-20

Revisiting the Storybooks That Raised Us

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