Life has been stressful recently. I have a high schooler who has been doing some heavy courses - enjoyable but heavy. I have a middle schooler who is at the awkward age of wanting to be older and still wanting to snuggle on the couch and who is often pushing back against what is asked of him. There’s also life - politics in the United States, relatives with health issues, a partner who is traveling more, driving from one end of the state to the other multiple days a week to get to various activities, a dog who stole a whole dinner of chicken off the the counter and is allergic to chicken. You get the idea.

I felt the need to add some lightness to our days. In the past this might have meant games or playground time or making play dough. But the high schooler claims to hate games now, they both claim they’re too old for the playground, and I don’t even dare suggest the play dough!

Then recently, as we were sitting down to do our daily reading, I looked over at our bookshelves and saw all the picture books on the bottom shelf. Aha! I pulled out an old favorite, Cranberry Autumn, and started our family read-aloud with that. The kids leaned in close to see the pictures. We reminisced about other books in the series we enjoyed. The whole mood lightened. 

I pulled out a different book the next day. And the next. On the fourth day we were short on time and instead of a picture book first, I just picked up our current novel. Both kids immediately protested! I had found our magic. 

Since then we have started almost every read-aloud session with a picture book. Some are old favorites, some are new finds that looked cute on the library shelf, some are related to the history or people we are studying (we read a fantastic book that describes the intricacies of the Supreme Court!), some are in Spanish to help our foreign language studies… serious, funny, cute, informative, goofy. It doesn’t seem to matter; there’s a magic to picture books that transcends all ages.