Yesterday was International Children’s Book Day. For over forty years, this day has been celebrated “to inspire a love of reading and to call attention to children’s books.” Sponsored by The International Board on Books for Young People, this year’s theme is “The Book Remembers.”

“The book remembers the time in which it was written”

One could read history books to learn about life in a different time, but what better than a book to let you know, really let you feel, what life was really like.

I may have learned about pioneers and earlier settlers from school books. But what brought their lives to life? My childhood passion for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s novels, reading about the Big Woods, The House on the Prairie, and more.

I devoured those books! I loved reading about all her adventures and her family’s trials and tribulations in those early days. And a teacher at 16! I couldn’t imagine it.

The book remembers, even after we’ve forgotten.

Are there any books or stories you have read that ‘remembered’ something, maybe an event, a different time, something that, had it not been preserved in a book, may have been forgotten?