Where do children develop the lifelong love for reading?
I think, for me, it's because my father read to my sister and me A LOT.
And what did he read?
Well, my parents, most likely my mother, started a subscription to the Weekly Readers Children's Book Club for us.
Each month, we received a new hardcover book in the mail. The types of titles we received grew with us.
When my sister and I were young, our father read these books to us, over and over. He'd sit in the middle, and we sat on either side so we could see the pictures and follow the text.
One of our favorite books from this club was called The Witch of Hissing Hill by Mary Calhoun, the author of the Katie John books, which I also loved.
Here is its synopsis:
Sizzle was a witch with a reputation for raising outstanding witch cats: they knew how to spit and scratch and slink with the best of them, how to yowl, and (most importantly) how to stare unblinkingly at a bubbling pot, thereby ensuring the success of the potion in brew. Witches came to Hissing Hill from all over, sure of finding the sort of cats they needed. And then one day, a little yellow kitten named Gold was born - a true disgrace to her clowder of black cats. Was this the end of Sizzle's famous cat-breeding? Would her cats now be (horrors!) nice!?!
And an excerpt:
Far back in the hill country is Hissing Hill.
It's a bare lonely spot, with one twisted house
and a tall fir behind it.
Once upon a time the hill was aswarm
with black witch cats.
Cats arching their backs on the rooftop,
cats chasing up the fir tree,
cats yowling on crooked fence posts,
cats hissing in every corner of the shackly house.
And all of them black, black, black.
Here is a video of someone reading the book, if you're interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4UMlZOBMUM
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