I only came across The Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate recently but this true story has lost none of its power or, sadly, its relevance since 1993, when the events it tells about took place in the town of Billings in Montana, US. Written by Janice Cohn, who spoke to many of the people involved first-hand, and beautifully illustrated by Bill Farnsworth, The Christmas Menorahs was published two years later (by Albert Whitman). It’s an inspiring book to share with older children (it’s aimed at 9-12 year olds) and is bound to provoke discussion.

It was the third night of Hannukkah and young Isaac Schnitzer was doing his homework when there was a loud crash in his bedroom: someone had thrown a rock through the window at the menorah that had been shining out into the darkness.

Isaac was stunned when he found out that rock had been thrown because he was Jewish, one incident in a spate of racist and anti-semitic attacks in the town. At this point, this crime could simply have become another statistic, with Isaac and his family picking up the pieces and carrying on. This did indeed happen: Isaac’s parents talked to him about not allowing bullies to stop them celebrating their holiday and that is what they resolved to do. However, this event was also the catalyst for a community-wide reaction to the intolerance. A town meeting was held and a woman called Margaret MacDonald, inspired by the King of Denmark and others wearing the yellow star of David during the second world war so that the Nazis would not be able to distinguish who was Jewish quite so easily, suggested that everyone put a menorah in their window. (more…)

A recent addition to our blog is Around the World in 100 Bookshelves, where parents are encouraged to send photos of their children’s bookshelves, along with the name and age of their child. It is already becoming wildly popular, with snapshots coming in from all corners of the world, and I am always eager to see the latest bookshelf, or variant thereof–parents are quite creative in ways to store their offspring’s book collections! (My oldest son’s first books were kept in his little red wagon, which he was too small to use for conventional purposes.)

My reaction is curious as well as delighted, and comments from other viewers convey the same yearning to know what are the titles of some of the books in these pictures. And beyond that question is which of these titles are most requested as bedtime stories or daytime readalouds?

Which of these books does the owner spend time poring over, perhaps knowing them by heart? If they are owned by someone who can read the words, which of them is most read aloud to her parents or his younger siblings–or to a pet dog or cat for that matter!

Please tell us which books are most popular in your household? Which one can you recite from menory as you read it aloud to your child? And, while you’re at it, if you haven’t sent us a picture of your child’s library, we are eager to see it–and so are other parents around the world.

Let’s find out if a child in Bangalore loves the same book as a child in Brooklyn–and what books a mother in the Philippines most enjoys reading aloud to her children. The world is full of wonderful books and the children who love them–which are your child’s favorites?

Although my mother taught her children to love books with a fierce and covetous passion, it was a rare occasion when she read to us. She was a woman who had five children in nine years, who lived in Alaska with no electricity or running water, who baked everything we ate from scratch and was either cooking  or washing our clothes or doing her best to keep us in a presentable state. She had time for little else.

My father read to us in the winter when the nights were long–Heidi,  The Rose and the Ring, Treasure Island,  –my earliest memories are of these books that enthralled me long before I went to school. Then he went blind.

By the time my father was no longer able to read aloud, I was hopelessly ensnared in the tradition. The minute I finished a book that I loved, I would promptly begin reading it aloud to my younger sisters and brother, my captive audience. They were, however, a strongminded group and would certainly have rebelled if necessary, but instead they would frequently ask me to read to them, even after they could read to themselves. (more…)

My father had a team of huskies when I was small. They were working dogs, trained to pull freight on a sled, and it was conventional wisdom that to make pets of these animals would spoil them as sled dogs. As a child who saw little distinction between animals and people, I was initially delighted to have eight new dogs in the family and then horrified that I couldn’t make friends with them.

It was a safety issue as well as a pragmatic one. Children in rural Alaska were frequently savaged when they came too close to  chained huskies,  and I was forbidden to go anywhere near the doghouses that our dog team was chained to. My father would give them food and water twice a day, but during the summer, when there was no snow for sledding, the dogs ate, slept, and watched our household from the shelter of their own cramped little houses.

Their summer lives were boring beyond extreme, I decided, and so I would go, book in hand, sit on an empty doghouse that was a safe distance away, and I would read to them. I was careful to choose books that would interest them, like  Call of the Wild or White Fang, and thye would come out of their houses and sit, watching me, heads cocked to one side, clearly interested. Sometimes they would make little noises when I finished our storytime, that would persuade me to stay for another chapter. (more…)