Halloween has come and gone. Now we can look forward to Thanksgiving (or, as many of us call it, “turkeyday”), a day on which we give thanks for many things, including turkey, but no turkey in its right mind has anything to be thankful for unless it escaped the axe.
But let’s look back at the holiday just past—and my fantasy of my kind of Halloween.
In my fantasy, first of all a new breed of publishers springs up, companies that publish tiny and inexpensive books that perhaps contain a story, or a chapter of a longer book. Second, a new tradition grows: instead of giving out candy on Halloween, indulgent hoseholds spend a wee bit more on these bargain-priced booklets and hand them out instead to trick-or-treaters.
After all, reading IS sweet, and books ARE a treat.
In my own admittedly atypical childhood, I’d rather have read a book than indulged in candy. (Although chomping on a sweet while reading was certainly a double pleasure.)
But getting back to my fantasy: I imagine the day after Halloween, and the day after that, and the week after that…. I imagine all the children scooping up their haul of little books and curling up or stretching out to read them, gorging themselves on stories, reading voraciously and then re-re-reading their faves.
I envision the children devouring these minibooks with their eyes and their brains and enjoying them as much as if they were sweets. I envision more and more children learning to love to read—and going on to beg their parents for regular-size books.
Ah, what a sweet fantasy!