Before each of our three daughters were released from the hospital as newborns, they were swaddled tightly and placed in my husband Doug's arms, where they got familiar with the warmth and love of this most significant person in their new lives, their father. Doug looked down at each precious girl, scanning, memorizing, and loving each unique feature. When the moment was right, he reached into our hospital bag and found the treasure he'd brought: the very first book they would own. Then he began to read. I remember thinking with our first born, Where did that book come from? I had packed our hospital bag with all the physical essentials: clothes, diapers, and a receiving blanket. But he had slipped in an essential of a different kind, a brain-expanding, entertaining, language-learning, bonding essential—a book.

Our oldest daughter, Jolie, and her husband just welcomed Hadley Mae (pictured), their first baby and our first grandchild. Before she arrived, Doug, Emily, Madeline, and I went to the bookstore and chose the first book each of us would read to our new family member.  

Continuing the tradition of a life full of books and love, we inscribed each with "I read this to you on the day you were born." 

Teachers all over the world continue this tradition in their classrooms each and every day. It's an important mission, especially since many of our students don't come from homes where books are purchased and pored over. We must be voracious readers of children's literature, finding books that we can share with our whole class or hand to a student in anticipation that it might be "the" book that will open a whole new world for them. It won't necessarily be the first book they've ever owned, but it might be the book that begins a lifelong love of literacy. 

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