her favourite, more book sharing

This is the hands down, clear winner when it comes to the book both my dh and I read most often, constantly, without pause, day after day to Esmé. Her choice. She has a sound effect for each page; the 'wooo! wooo!' of the seven doges chasing one another, the 'pffff! pffff!' (think panting out of breathe) of the six joggers jogging, the 'slurp slurp' with signs to match the lucky two big girls licking ice creams. I think no matter how tired we get of reading this book, my dh and I read it yet again as it is placed (thrust) in to our hands. Because. Because it's her favourite book. She gets so much pleasure from it. A strange, huge amount for such a short, small story book. Again and again. And again and again. Sigh. :)



I wonder if she will remember this book. I wonder if she remembers her joy at being read to over and over. It reminds of one of my brothers, he had this book, Jeremy Mouse was hungry (greedy mouse, leans too far to gather more balckberries and falls in to the river - see! Even I remember it and I wasn't even doing the reading, I was somewhere in the background) and even though he couldn't read he knew that story word for word (er, we all did I think). Just like this one. I hear the boys repeating the text to each other in sing-song voices while they do other things, absorbed, unaware that they are even speaking. It's amazing how books permeate a family so. So that you smile and shake your head and read it yet again for the 12th time that day and actually don't mind. Can even summon funny voices. It's a sort of pleasure. Like having and itch and itching it, over and over, even though it gets sore.



Shirley Hughes, you've created an itch of a book.



We pretty much like the other Shirley Hughes books I found here and there, upstairs, down, in one pile, in another.... I had no idea we had so many until I collected them together.



Treasure. Of many sorts.