Reading out loud is not just for first graders. Books can bond mothers and children forever.

If I look back over my life, the things that I enjoyed doing when I was young are pretty much the things I enjoy now. Well, obviously there are activities I enjoy now that I didn't partake in when I was a kid (after all, I have four kids of my own) but from an early age I loved reading, and sports. Not sports exactly - more like reading about sports. Books have a place in so many memories, from all stages of my life. I guess my earliest memory of reading was reading aloud in class; it must've been 2nd grade. I used to love reading out loud and I didn't have any patience at all when the other kids would read (with varying degrees of aptitude). So what I really enjoyed was reading ahead while the other kids did their reading-aloud act. By the time autumn rolled into winter, I was more or less done with that reader, having gone ahead right to the very end. Nerdy, but true. To this day, I like reading out loud - I can read to my grandchildren for hours (all the books I read to my own children). When the first Harry Potter book came out, my daughter was too young to read it by herself and so I read a chapter to her every night before she went to sleep. Despite the fact that she did grow up along with the series, we never gave up the tradition and so I found myself reading Number 6 to my 16-year-old daughter, a memory I'll cherish forever. It's one of the reasons I can't wait for the next and last book, which will come out a few weeks after she graduates high school and a month or so before she leaves home for points unknown. Harry will always have a warm place in my heart.