This week, as I reviewed the list of books she’s had read to her, or has looked at, over and over again, I thought about the many social, emotional, creative, and intellectual gifts she’s received as a result.

I picture her at a book party, holding a bunch of brightly-colored balloons decorated with each of the reasons why parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older brothers and sisters, friends, teachers, and librarians—why, everybody!—should read stories aloud to young children.

1. I learn to listen.

2. I grow my vocabulary

3. I develop empathy.

4. I have fun.

5. I laugh out loud.

6. I learn a second language.

7. I find out about the world and all its diversity.

8. I realize that I can be and do many things.

9. I observe amazing art.

10. I feel the rhythm of language.

11. I encounter all the information that can be found in books.

12. I spark my imagination.

13. I see myself and others different from myself.

14. I feel loved.

15. I feel safe.

And now, for a moment I remember how, before I began reading on my own, my mother’s voice brought my favorite stories to life. How these stories created in me a sense of hope and well-being, assuring me that the world was full of possibilities; that I could do and be many things, a heroine of my own adventure.

2018 Children’s Book Week poster, designed by Jillian Tamaki

However, lately I’ve decided that I did something even more important: As a child, I played. Growing up in the 1950’s I played with dolls I named Ginny, Cindy, and Saucy. I cut out Betsy-Tacy paper dolls. I took stuffed dogs named Lady and Tramp on long walks, holding their red plastic leashes tightly in my small hand. I spent hours with a family with six children who lived in a tin, two-story dollhouse.

And, it was through this act of playing that I practiced and learned the most valuable skill of all: I developed an imagination. I developed my innate ability to form stories in my mind, an ability to create.

A year after I was born, the American Character Doll Company introduced Tiny Tears^®, a rubber doll with a hard-plastic head and molded hair. Tiny Tears had a round face, blue eyes with thick lashes, a pinched button nose, and an open hole in her tiny red mouth. The diapered doll came in a box with a baby bottle, pacifier and bubble pipe. In addition to drinking, wetting, and blowing bubbles, Tiny Tears could cry real tears.

No seven year-old girl was ever happier than I when Santa Claus left a ‘crybaby’ under our family’s Christmas tree.

Tiny Tears

Tiny Tears was just one of my many dolls, carefully selected by my mother. My mother loved dolls; she kept her own until the end of her life. No doubt I will too.

Tiny Tears wasn’t my first baby doll, but she and her predecessor, a cherub-like infant named Susie, were, and still are, my favorites.

Susie-doll

Like the hand-sewn, sentient sock monkeys in The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea, my dolls were well-loved. Wear and tear from squishy hugs and frequent handling are evidence of that.

Tiny Tears now has a break in her head and a fissure crack above her faded blue eyes. Her left arm is loose in its socket. Susie-Doll’s once soft and rubbery body feels like wood. Her right arm is crumbling, her left arm long gone. Meant to look like real human beings, these toys willingly assumed the endless variety of voices and personalities and roles that my young imagination assigned them.

Eventually another baby doll came into my life, one I’d most likely seen in Wish Book, the Sears Roebuck annual Christmas catalog. At first glance, Baby-doll was perfect every way. She had a pink bonnet, a ruffled pink party dress and pink slip and bloomers. In truth her perfectly formed plastic body was too large to carry, too hard to snuggle with, too cumbersome for quick and easy wardrobe changes. Her eyes seemed too blue and sparkly. She was a doll to be looked at, a doll who was difficult to love.

Baby-doll

A few weeks ago, the importance of play in the development of creativity was brought close to home when I spent a week in New Jersey with my granddaughter. Like all young children, her imagination is wild and fearless. The lines between the real and the imaginary are wonderfully blurred. She invites giraffes and dinosaurs to tea parties. She scrubs down Rody, a play riding pony, with a vegetable brush in the kitchen sink. She diapers Pippa, a stuffed rabbit, with paper towels.

Knowing my history, it should come as no surprise that soon after Ofelia’s birth I started thinking about the kind of baby doll I was going to buy for her. When I shared my desire with my daughter, she promptly said, “No, Mom. No baby dolls.”

Luckily my daughter has changed her mind. For my granddaughter’s third birthday in May, my present will be a custom-made Waldorf baby doll. My daughter found the doll maker on Etsy.com. We co-selected our desired eye color, skin color, hair color and style, as well as the colors, fabrics, and yarns for the doll’s first outfit, making me a very happy grandmother.

Waldorf dolls

My own precious dolls and our endless hours of play left an indelible mark on my heart and memory. In ways both conscious and unconscious, our long-ago time together leaves its mark on the kinds of stories for children that I’m trying to tell.

The next three hours, which I spent with Sneha Saxena, Development Officer, and Lisa Miller, Senior Development Officer, of the HCMC Hennepin Health Foundation; and Lynne Burke, Department of Pediatrics Children’s Literacy Liaison, proved to be one of the most personally gratifying experiences of the past year—a year in which I’ve been plagued by multiple health issues related to Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome. After struggling with the hidden symptoms of this “invisible” disease for more than 20 years, trust me when I say, “Sometimes reading is the best medicine.” (Creative writing helps as well.)

(from l to r) Chanon Ridore, Nurse Practitioner, author Eileen Beha, and Lynne Burke, HCMC Children’s Literature Liaison

Sneha, Lisa and Lynne, along with members of HCMC’s pediatric staff, gave generously of their time and talents as they shared with me the mission and values of the Children’s Literacy Programs and Projects. Simply stated, the programs connect children with books because literacy experiences are critical to a child’s healthy development. While the primary focus is on their patients and child visitors, members of their team also work in the community to bring kids and books together.

During my visit, I learned that 30,000 books are given away at HCMC and its clinics every year. The total number of books distributed to children since the program’s inception (2002) is 200,000!

The three major program components are:

~ Books for Babies in the nursery

~ Reach Out and Read in early childhood

~ Book Buddies for all ages.

Many of the books are multi-lingual: English, Spanish, Somali, Hmong, Oromo, French, and Russian. HCMC’s Children’s Literacy Program seems to be a perfect example of why we need diverse books, why every story matters, and how stories connect us.

How did I find out about the program? Through a friend named Jean who coordinates a “knitting ministry” for HCMC patients. Among the items her church group donates are baby hats for newborns and oversized mittens for the bandaged hands of burn victims. When I told Jean that I’d always hoped to put my books into the hands of children in need of healing, Jean gave me Sneha Saxena’s email address. Within an hour of receiving my email, Sneha responded with a personal phone call to my home. Our connection was made.

I share this experience on-line because I know that there are so many people—children’s and young adult book authors, booksellers, librarians, teachers, parents, grandparents, book lovers of all kinds—who know from first-hand experience that children who read lead healthier lives.

If you, or someone you know, might be interested in becoming involved with the HCMC Children’s Literacy Program, learn more at: www.hcmc.org/read. And, if you would like to help the program meet its goal of giving away their 250,000th book sometime in 2015, contact Sneha Saxena: sneha.saxena@hcmed.org or Lynne Burke: lynne.burke@hcmed.org.

Or, if you live in the Twin Cities area and would like to add some of your favorite, new, non-religious children’s and young adult books to those that I’ll be donating on April 17th, send me an email: eileenbeha@tango.com. I’ll make arrangements to either pick up the books or I’ll give you my home address in south Minneapolis, where you can drop your books in a covered plastic bin that I’ll leave next to my front door. (If you want a tax donation receipt, it’s best to make your book or financial donation directly.)

These days, as I read my way through a stack of high-quality books for young readers, I like to visualize a particular book in the hands of a hospitalized or chronically ill child. Then I add the title to my list of books I plan to donate in the future, feeling just a little bit more like my younger and healthier self.

“The right book at the right time impacts many lives.”

~ Lynne Burke, HCMC Children’s Literature Liaison