For the first time in eight years, I've been thoroughly reviewing books and finding publications that I've almost forgotten about. Looking at many finds, I see how many mistakes I made, while with the excitement of neophyte made up the library for their children. I can't say that now I'm not stepping on the old rake, but the stacks of books that children still haven't opened and aren't sure if they will open at all, will be sobering for a while.
Everybody has their own experience, and I will categorically refrain from giving advice, but perhaps my bookwalking will find recognition in someone else. I won't believe that book fairies have bypassed at least one parent. That's why I'm telling you about my buyer's failures.
1. After the birth of my eldest daughter, for a long time I had only two interests in my head - eating and sleeping. Therefore, the sacramental question "what to read to the child in three months?" I could not arise in principle. But at some point in my life I played with paints again (maybe I finally got some sleep), and I started to actively look for good children's books. That's where the number one mistake came up.
My searches led to huge deposits of beautiful publications. The Internet was crawling with information. And for a man who hadn't just been squeamish about a penny collection of Chukovsky, intercepted on the run in the subway, the realization that there were books in the world with illustrations by Igor Oleynikov, Gennady Kalinovsky or Viktor Pivovarov had to be a great shock.
The reaction to him was predictable: I needed all the masterpieces of the world illustration and immediately, because otherwise everything will be bought and my best child in the world in his conditional future will not be so charming, without which there is no way to grow up aesthetically sensitive person. The discovery that the masterpieces of the world illustration - the most popular product and buy a well-illustrated classics entirely failed to anyone (someone ran out of room in the house, someone - money), came much later.
2. The next wrong step was buying books for growth. If with classical fairy tales I could still be deceiving, ahead of time, and amuse myself (like "We were reading Winnie the Pooh at the age of two and laughed like that"), there were books with which even self-suasion did not help. They obviously weren't meant for preschoolers. There would have been one loophole and the opportunity to pretend that later the children would grow up and be able to appreciate the older literature. If not for one "but".
Let's assume an ideal situation: someone has collected a golden thousand and with a sense of accomplishment of duty gives the child conditional keys to the wardrobe. In my case, the bookcase worked differently. The collection grew and swollen. The more books I bought, the more I put off my "wish list". All the time it seemed that no, no and I would miss a rare edition, it would come out of circulation, and it would be the end of the world, I would stop rejoicing at reading with children, because I wouldn't be able to introduce them to the only story, which is no longer found.
The truth is, disappointments have really happened a couple of times. Although most often it was a temporary inconvenience. For example, it was a shame not to have time with Pavel Schrute's "Socks" that almost instantly melted away. But three years later, the book was reissued, and the daughters grew up to the age when it was time to read it.
This is an example of a failed purchase with a happy ending. And how many were held with unhappy! With such deposits I choose to adhere to the opinion that the books do not spoil, each will come in turn.
3. unless unforeseen mistake number three comes to light. I was buying books based on my taste. Yes, all these tips about "give the child the freedom of choice in the bookstore" are good, and I gave them away for some time, right and left, but in reality my children, who at home saw enough illustrations from the classics to the avant-garde, found themselves in the bookstore, grabbed the first "silly" baby book and assured that without it they would not make a single step.
Making a choice on my own, I was insured against the fact that the books I didn't want to get into the house. But it turned out that in this case, it was easy to go to the other extreme and fill the house with books that did not please children. Then I spent years regularly offering one thing or the other and hearing the whimsical "no-o-o" in return. Sometimes I'd get what I wanted, and it could be a huge success. I once spent two years trying to get Pippi Longstocking to read together. When I forced the children to agree, we read all three books about Peppy three times in a row. But there are also things that the kids are so chronically uninterested in that I gave up even trying.
And the last and freshest mistake I made was finding books for my first independent reading. With trembling preparation for the moment when fanfare and daughters will be choped up by themselves, I picked up a small shelf of books in the category "I'm good at my mother's, I read myself". Just wonderful things, but their children did not want to read them categorically. In protest against the mother's dictatorship or as a manifestation of the freedom of reading will, but the children learned to read fluently from the thick books in the