I wasn’t a reader as a kid. I’d see other kids who always talked about books they read, or would discuss a movie and say, “But the book was better,” and it just seemed so foreign to me.Reading is boring. Why the hell would someone want to read when they can watch TV or go outside?(I’m going to stop myself before I go off on a tangent and this ends up as a 2,000-word post. We’ll cover my development of reading in a future post. And I’ll link to it here.)But my opinion changed, and by the time I had kids I decided that I wanted to read to them. Every single day. Whether they understood what I was reading or not.I read Little Women to my oldest daughter when she was seven or eight. It took forever, but it’ll always be one of my fondest memories, especially since I wasn’t around her as much when she was younger, so I didn’t read to her as much as I did to her younger siblings.For the past twelve-plus years I’ve read to my kids. Maybe not quite everyday, but almost everyday. And everyday for long periods of time.So we’ve read countless books. Everything from four page hard cardboard books to the Brothers Grimm and Edgar Allen Poe stories I’m currently reading to my older sons. (Public service announcement: Don’t read Poe’s story “The Black Cat” to your kids before you read it yourself to screen it for suitability. Yikes!)After reading so many books it’s difficult to choose just one to satisfy tonight’s Blogapalooz-hour in which ChicagoNow bloggers are given a topic and then challenged to write a post in one hour. Tonight’s topic: “Write about a book or publication that is special to you or has had a big impact on your life.”The books that I’ve read to my kids immediately came to mind. But how to choose just one? (Again, to avoid a tangent, I’ll write a post about all the great books we’ve read and link it here.)But any time I think about what we’ve read, one book in particular always stands out. It’s the one I’ve read the most times to my three youngest children. It’s one of a few that we’ve actually worn out. The spine of our first copy gave way and pages started falling out. I have that one tucked away in a tote, and have been reading a new copy for the past half-decade.The book? Where the Wild Things Are. Story and Pictures by Maurice Sendak.I first read this book in a children’s literature course in college. The professor, George Bodmer, loved it and we spent a couple of class sessions talking about the way the pictures creeped beyond their boundaries, and how the wild things were drawn, and the irregular punctuation, and on, and on. I loved it, and I tucked away the title to be recalled when I had my own children.It was one of the first books that I read to my son soon after he was born. And we never stopped reading it.It’s not an exaggeration to say that I’ve read that book two thousand times. Often more than once in a night. Often every single night for weeks at a time.And in reading the book so many times, I’ve developed a sort of performance style. I keep the same pauses for the same beats: “The night Max wore his wolf suit, and made mischief of one kind,” beat beat beat while turning the page, “and another….”I make the same hand motions. “And Max said, ‘I’ll eat you up!’” As I read those words my hand tickles the stomach of the kid to whom I’m reading. I make a claw motion as I read, “And showed their terrible claws.”There are three pages in the middle of the book in which Max and the wild things are swinging from trees, but there are no words. So I improvise the same words on all three pages: “Bum bum bum bum bum BUM.” And punctuate it on the next page by raising my hand when Max says, “Now stop!”There’s more to it. The book is longish, and dramatic, and very melancholy, so it’s perfect for sharing and performing.And it will always be special to me because of how many hours we’ve spent reading it, just me and one, or two, or three of my kids. As they’ve grown, and we’ve read more books, and they’ve learned to read on their own, Where the Wild Things Are remains constant. We still come back to it. It never gets old, even though they know the story entirely.It’s a thread that runs throughout their childhood, and throughout my parenthood. At this point, it’s more than just a book.(Also, I considered writing about the Baseball Encyclopedia. Another future post, the link to which you’ll find here someday.)IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Watching Jaws With my KidsPREVIOUS POST: Should I Ignore A Copyright to Watch a Film From my Childhood?Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.