No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.
~ Henry Ward Beecher, The Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher (1870)
My children are certainly surrounded with books! There are 7 bookcases in my home office, 7 in the living room, 5 in the dining room, 3 in the kitchen and breakfast room, 2 in the hall, 3 in the bedrooms. Not to mention all those boxes of recent library-sale acquisitions that I haven’t even shelved yet. . . .
I would love to have a dedicated “library” with floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall bookcases, but it’s probably better to have books in every room anyway. Oh, but the Beast’s library in the Beauty and the Beast movie is certainly glorious!
Mary Jo