Hey Jakey,

I've started compiling a small list of the books that you're going to need to read as you grow up. I don't know if you're going to be a reader like your momma, or not, like your daddy, but if you *do* read, here's where you need to start:

* The Wrinkle in Time books by Madeleine L'Engle
* The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
* Trumpet of the Swan and Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
* The Nancy Drew Books by Carolyn Keene (Okay, I give you permission to read The Hardy Boys instead...)
* The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
* The Dragons of Pern books by Anne McCaffrey
* The Spellsinger books by Alan Dean Foster

I swear, honey, if you read these books while you're young, these are the ones that you will remember for the rest of your life, and you will re-visit them often, as a kid and also as an adult.

I would never even have tried a liverwurst sandwich (My favorite now for years. I know, yuck!) or listened to Holst's The Planets if I had not read about them first in A Wrinkle in Time. The Narnia books will instill in you a sense of adventure and a thirst to visit other worlds; also a profound, life-long sadness that you may not ever find that magic wardrobe.

Yes, I wish the Harry Potter books had been around when I was a kid. I'm just now finishing up the last book published. There are supposedly two more in the series to be published at a later date. I've been immersed in the Harry Potter world since Thanksgiving, when we were at your gramma's house, and I had nothing to read and borrowed the first book in the series from your Aunt L.

Please, please, please be a reader. Your daddy thinks I'm nuts for spending so much time reading. He would much rather watch movies or play on the computer or read magazines, and I think he's missing out. I don't know, though. The few times that I've tried to sit down with you to look at books, you weren't having any of it. Maybe when you get a little older.

My mom read endlessly to me when I was little. Probably because we usually lived in foreign countries and there was no television, at least in English. Some places, we didn't even have electricity. But I'm positive that that is what got me started reading as much as I do.

Okay, off of soapbox now. I'll keep adding to this list as I think of others. Read what you want, just read! Love you.