Readers should put ‘A Book on Every Bed’

DEAR READERS

>> For the past 14 years, I have devoted one December column entirely to the idea of giving books to children on Christmas morning (or whatever wintertime holiday you celebrate).

I was first inspired by a sweet story I read about historian David Mccullough’s childhood, where he and his three brothers would wake up on Christmas morning to a wrapped book, left by Santa on the foot of their beds.

I communicated with Mr. Mccullough, and from his home in Massachusetts he confirmed the story and generously gave me permission to use his childhood tradition to encourage families to start their holiday by unwrapping a book — and reading together.

That’s the origin story of “A Book on Every Bed,” and in the years I’ve published this appeal (to give books to children, and to start your holiday by reading together), it has grown into a literacy campaign. Schools, libraries, bookstores, churches and community centers have picked up this idea and are helping families to bring books into their households during the holiday season.

My own literacy story starts with my mother, Jane, who, despite some rough circumstances during my childhood, showed her four children that books and literature would always illuminate the way toward better things. She was the person who said to me, “When you have a book, you’re never alone.”

One of my favorite memories of my mother involved catching her reading “Anna Karenina” while seated in the crowded bleachers during a noisy high school basketball game. (Final score: Tolstoy 1, basketball, 0).

I was allowed to get lost in the stacks of our tiny local library, eventually discovering the books that would change my life: The “Childhood of Famous Americans” series (currently published by Simon and Schuster). I plowed through these biographies with the hunger of a young person desperate to read about “real” people who overcame their own childhood challenges and went on to lead extraordinary lives.

Last Christmas, working with the Children’s Reading Connection, (childrensreadingconnection.org), a national literacy campaign based in Ithaca, N.Y., I received the thrill of my own career as a reader and writer by giving each child, teacher and staff member of the rural primary school of my childhood books of their own to take home.

Watching these children clutch their new books tightly was a joy and a reminder that literacy really starts with a human connection.

I hope that readers will be similarly inspired to spread this joy.