OLD MOTHER WEST WIND

     The first book I remember loving was Old Mother West Wind by Thornton Burgess. Long after I read it, whenever I went to the public library, I would walk by the shelf where it sat and look at it, as if I were visiting an old friend. I doubt many children read it nowadays, and even whether it is part of many library collections.

     It's the same with my mother's favorite childhood book. She loved The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. I read it at her insistence as a child, but not with the same passion for it that she had. My daughters didn't read it, and I'm certain modern children don't know much about it.

      I wonder if it will be the same with the favorite books of my daughters' childhoods. Stonewords by Pam Conrad was Rebecca's favorite, and Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson was Amy's.

      Fortunately certain classic books have survived, Peter Pan, Little Women, The Wind in the Willows, Mary Poppins. They are on the library's shelves, although I'm not certain they are read, even as a family read aloud. Just yesterday, a woman asked me for Peter Pan. I was so thrilled that she wanted to read it to her daughter I practically pranced to the shelf.

       Then I handed her the book.

       "Oh, no," she said, looking at it. "She's only five."

        "That will be fine," I said. "I think she will enjoy your reading it to her."

          "Don't you have a children's version?"

         "This is a book for children," I said, wanting to remind her that she was standing in the children's section of the library, after all!

           "Well, I mean like abridged, or like by Walt Disney or something."

           THAT WOULD NOT BE PETER PAN! Is what I wanted to scream at her. Of course, I couldn't.

           "No, we don't have anything like that," I said. I took the book back, giving it a little squeeze to remind it that it was still loved.

         Are old books like abandoned toys, desperately wanting a child to love them again?