Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today is my mom's birthday! In her honor I am including this link to a profile article that the New York Times ran today on Beverly Cleary.

I know about Cleary because my Mom, who is a good decade younger than her, first introduced me to Cleary's works. And somewhere between first and third grade, I got hooked.

Every week Mom would take us to the Salem Public Library in Oregon and let her five kids get our load for the week. I carried out stacks, at least five at a time. How in the world did she keep up with five kids' stacks of books?

Some of my happiest memories are of both Mom and Dad reading to us. On one particularly memorable night, Mom got so hooked on the story she was reading to my little sister and me that instead of reading the usual single nightly chapter (as we lay in our bunk beds--me on the bottom, "Betsy" on top), Mom read four chapters. Four! That was better than the gallon tub of ice cream Dad would buy us whenever Mom was away.

(That's me on the right.)