Best selling author and nationally syndicated advice columnist, Amy Dickinson, "Ask Amy"
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"Ask Amy," by Amy Dickinson
December 18, 2012
Put a Book on Every BedAsk Amy
Dear Readers: Many of us are spending time this week scurrying around, looking for the "perfect" gift. And yet, looking back through our own holiday memories, we realize that the best gifts arrive in the form of traditions or objects that we can look at and know exactly where they came from. We invest these simple possessions with meaning and memories.
For the past three years I have advocated for a gift-giving concept that is simple, straightforward, inexpensive, and that reaps boundless and lifelong rewards.
Like all my best ideas, this was stolen (borrowed really). Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough (author of the books “Truman,” “John Adams” and many other) once related in an interview that every Christmas morning during his childhood, he and his siblings awoke to the gift of a wrapped book on their beds, delivered in the night by Santa.
Thus was born “A Book on Every Bed.” I have teamed with The Family Reading Partnership (familyreading.org) in my hometown of Ithaca, N.Y. With its help, this simple concept has spread through libraries, schools, churches, and bookstores, across this country and beyond.
Here’s how it works: You take a book (it can be a new book or your favorite from your own childhood). You wrap it. On Christmas Eve (or whatever holiday you celebrate), you leave the books in a place where Santa is likely to find it. When I communicated with David McCullough about borrowing his idea, he was very clear: Santa handles the delivery and places the book on a child’s bed.
In the morning, the children in your household will awaken to a gift that will far outlast any toy: literacy.
I know this for sure: No matter who you are or what you do, reading will unlock untold opportunities, mysteries and passions. When you have a book and the ability to tell, read and share stories, you gain access to the universe of others’ imaginations. And avid readers know that if you have a book, you are never alone.
We have probably exceeded our original goal for one million children to wake up on Christmas morning to a wrapped book, and so this year’s appeal will be for parents, grandparents, teachers and librarians to continue to spread this concept in their families and communities.
To share your stories and photos, check my Facebook page: facebook.com/Adickinsondaily
Send questions via e-mail to askamy@tribune.com or write to Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611.
Give $25 today so that 5 children can wake up to a new book on Christmas (or another winter holiday) morning!
Share your holiday reading tradition with us! Email us your story! or write your story here.
"We are so inspired by this idea! We are going to make sure that all the children at our neighborhood hospital in the Bronx will have a book on their beds this Christmas morning."
Family Reading Partnership
Ithaca, New York
Phone: 607-277-8602
Email: office@familyreading.org
