When they were learning to read, my grandsons brought home decodable books: readers the size of a playing card with simple stories featuring Bob, Dot, and Pat who did things with bats and pots and cats.  

The plots were slender, but they were more compelling than my grade-school readers about Alice and Jerry. Most public schools in those days went with Dick and Jane. Alice and Jerry were like Dick and Jane’s country cousins. Alice had old-fashioned braids and Jerry was permanently rumpled, like a young Jesse Eisenberg. Among their fellow characters were a dog named Jip, a neighbor named Mr. Carl, and a white horse named Dolly. You just know Dick and Jane wouldn’t have been caught dead hanging around with a horse. 

The tiny books my grandsons brought home will never be optioned by a major film producer, but they were blessedly short while serving their purpose: to encourage learners to use letter/sound relationships to read. 

I’m not a teacher, and perhaps I’m describing these books incorrectly. I do know, though, that the goal is successful reading experiences that guide kids to longer, more complex stories. 

I’ve always considered the step between not reading and reading almost magical. The writer Shirley Jackson wrote of the night her daughter Sally shouted joyfully from her bedroom, “I can READ! I can READ!”  

I had no explosive “I can READ!” moment. I dimly remember when printed letters were so much gray nothing, but I don’t recall when words suddenly came into focus.  

But thank heaven they did. Reading sustained me through my childhood. Some children grow up without the familiarity of favorite books, and I feel for them. If children need anything, they need beloved worlds they can return to again and again, knowing favorite characters and stories will be there. I benefited from the certainty of Ramona living on Klickitat Street, Betsy and Tacy climbing the Big Hill, and Freddy the pig writing poetry on the Beans’ farm. 

My grandsons were bringing home those decodable stories when I was still showing up with “fresh books.” I saw their progress when they started taking books out of my hands and reading them to me instead.  

Then they were off, to chapter books and graphic novels. Their rooms spill over with books; books are considered emergency supplies for car rides and waiting rooms. One of the rewards on my grandsons’ to-do list is “reading at the table.” 

I had occasion to ride in the middle seat of their van recently and was pleased to see the seatback pockets crammed with books and activities: Sudoku for my older grandson, various magazines for both of them, and of course graphic novels and what I think of as book-books.  

The characters they visit and re-visit are not those of my childhood, of course, although I know their mother has read the Little House series to them, along with Beverly Cleary’s books and even the random Betsy-Tacy. They’ll reach for Ben Hatke’s Zita and Mighty Jack, for Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books, for Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man...and other authors I don’t know. That’s what learning to read does: It gives young readers an affectionate pat between the shoulder blades and sends them off to worlds of their own.  

I try to keep up. When my granddaughter started middle school, she was invited to join the Newbery Club. One of the books she read was given to her by her teacher. She subsequently was given another copy signed by the author, leaving her with two copies of the same book. She gave the extra to her cousin, also in middle school, who lent it to me: Freewater, by Amina Luqman-Dawson, set in the Antebellum South, is the story of once-enslaved people who escape not to the north but by running south into the swamps. 

The book is based on truth, though the characters and the plot are entirely fictitious. I’d like to think Luqman-Dawson will write a sequel or three about her characters. More books mean more stories to re-visit when the time comes — for my grandchildren and for me.   

Which is not to say I never read aloud anymore. The delight of sharing a good story will live as long as readers do. My sister and I read Winnie the Pooh stories to each other when we were sick, the healthy one reading about Woozles and Heffalumps to the feverish one until we were through college. 

When my high-school daughters were visiting universities, I often read aloud on the road. More than once we skidded into admissions offices at the last possible second, after finishing a chapter in the visitors’ parking lot. 

I hope my grandchildren and their parents have similar experiences on their campus visits. Earbuds are all very well, but nothing beats shared memories of golden life moments just before everything changes.