Books: The Diary Quilt Wouldn't be Complete Without Them....

Books
What do you think -- add titles to the books, or leave them blank?

I love books.

I teach my boys at home. With books.

I've been reading since I was four, and have rarely been without a book since.

When we moved to Brazil, one-third of the boxes we packed and shipped over contained books, and that was the barest of the bare essentials; we did, painful as it was for me, leave some behind. Even gave some away.

I read on a Kindle now, but anything I already own in paper form is staying. I still read those, too.

This block is about all of that. About me, about reading, about my passion for reading. About teaching my boys, using books. Real books. Books they read over and over and over again.

It's a tribute to the many people in my life who helped me fall in love with reading. A tribute to the literature rich curriculum we use in our home school. A tribute to the years of bonding over books that I have had, will have, with my boys.  A tribute to the friends, real life & on-line, who've helped me along the way, encouraging me in my teaching endeavors. It's a tribute, most of all, to the single thing I love most in this world (as far as objects go): Books.  

To all the friends, characters in print, who filled my teenage years.

To good and untame lions and a world on the other side of a wardrobe door.

To Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern.

To a wise lawyer, raising his tomboy girl & football loving son, teaching them to climb inside someone's skin....or stand on his front porch....and see the world through someone else's eyes.

To a tight-knit band of teenage boys, fighting against society, who taught me what being Golden is all about and then made me cry like never before when a gallant young man was shot beneath a street light.

To a Bulldog and his Prince, now out of print and my copy ruined, who endured much at the hands of a boarding school headmaster who was a little bit "off," yet who found true friendship in each other.

To a young college graduate, who died too young but taught me that love means not having to say you're sorry. Because you're forgiven before the words leave your lips.

To the friends I didn't make until later.

To a very unordinary boy who grows from 11 to 18, learning what it means to do the right thing, to believe in something and to stand for something bigger than yourself.

To a very unordinary grown-up man who died protecting the boy he hated just because he loved the boy's mom. Always.

To Pooh, with no shirt, and Piglet in green, and saying goodbye to Christopher Robin, the most poignant goodbye in literature if you ask me.

To a little Chinese immigrant to the United States, who learns baseball and how to mimic cartoon characters and how to make her American classmates laugh, and who helped me help  my boys learn to live in Brazil.

To a real life mariner who lived a heartbreaking life and made me cry buckets. 

To the Austin family and Charles Wallace and Meg and adventures that moved me way beyond.

To a clockwork man, and the boy who built him, who was introduced to me by my oldest son, a friend that he discovered on his own.

To elves and dwarfs and hobbits and men, who together journey an impossible journey to destroy the greatest evil they've ever known, and to my Chemist who first made me read of their tales.

To so many more, old friends, new friends, yet to come friends. Because nothing's better than books. 

What is your favorite book? And how many of mine do you recognize? And, most pressing, should I embroider titles on the books in the block, or leave them blank.......and if I should, how on earth do I narrow it to six books??