My Dad shared a sweet story with me today… in the Italian class he teaches, a student told him they’ve lent my book to a friend and each night the husband is reading it aloud to his wife. What a lovely thought! I felt really touched to hear this. (And in a curious twist, today happens to be “Read Aloud Day”.) I loved it as a child when one of my parents read aloud to me each night and I always begged for ‘another story’ rather than go to sleep.
The Enchanted Wood was a favourite read to me and then I read over and over myself. I still have this 1956 edition Mum’s father gave to her when she was eight. Mum then gave it to me at about the same age, but when I was older and moved out of home, I left the book with her, knowing how she treasured it. Then, just two months before she died, Mum gave me this book again, wrapped as a present on the night I graduated from my Masters degree, and I can’t tell you how precious it is to me, even if very marked and foxed and falling apart!
(If only my name inside in my grade 3, ‘running writing’ – yet to graduate from pencil to pen – was as elegant as my grandfather’s cursive script. Mine’s really only got worse, not better!)
Happy reading aloud!
Zoë xx
Came across this bio for Italian author, Giovannino Guareschi in one of my father’s original copies of the Don Camillo books published in the 1950s, and loved it.
Zoë Boccabella 