Books take us on journeys

IS there a better gift you can give your child than a passion for reading?

Books fire our imagination, take us to wonderful, even wild places. Enlighten us. Entertain us. Help us dream about what could be, even what we could be.

I remember my mother reading Treasure Island to me as a child. Too impatient to wait for the nightly chapters, I grabbed the book myself to find out what happened to Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver.

It awakened a life-long love of adventure stories that spilled into a fascination with fantasy and science fiction. The worlds of C.S. Lewis, of Frank Herbert and Michael Moorcock stood ready to be explored.

Beyond childhood books became friends. I “lived” every page of Stephan Grundy’s Rhinegold, put down George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords (Game of Thrones series) in dismay after the red wedding. Rejoiced as Edmond Dantes gets his revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo.

In hard times there’s nothing like a book to distract us, to take us far from our problems.

That’s why I’m so excited about our Great Australian Storybook Collection promotion.

You’ll find a token inside today’s paper to pick up a copy of The Wonky Donkey for just $2.30. And we’ve another 13 books lined up over the next two weeks.

It’s a fabulous way to help introduce children to the joyous, wondrous world of reading. “Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? for the ways of the LORD are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein.” (Hosea 14:9 AKJV) Be wise. Walk in the ways of the Lord.