My daughter called me Friday morning to report on Twilight, the movie based on the first book in the popular teen vampire series. She and some college friends attended the first showing at 12:01 a.m. in Chicago. She knew I’d be interested because she got me devouring the books this summer after she became so taken with them earlier in the year.

I got to thinking how my daughters and I have come full circle in influencing each other’s choice of reading material. As long as I can remember, I have loved the worlds that books have taken me to. Before I could read, I went along with my dad and assorted siblings every Saturday morning to the public library on our way to the grocery store. When I could barely scrawl my name, I got a library card and checked out the maximum number of books allowed (just three at first) each week.

My own girls were read to nightly from the time they were babies until well after they could read chapter books on their own. When our oldest was about three, I started to read to her the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and she lapped them up, just as I had when I first discovered them in grade school. From there we progressed to Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series. And of course when  Jenny came along and because the girls shared a bedroom, she was exposed to all that literature as well. Even as the girls approached their middle-school years, I was still reading to them. By then we had found Brian Jacques’ Redwall books, and the girls protested that they couldn’t read and understand the British dialects he had his animal characters speaking, but they flattered me by claiming they understood and enjoyed them perfectly when I read (and performed) it to them.

Not long after that, though, J. K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book hit the stores, and the wheel began to turn. Wanting to know what enthralled the girls and their friends so, I picked up each volume as they finished it. In the ten years or so since, we’ve shared with each other books we enjoyed (and warned each other off of ones that were disappointing). My daughters have kept me current on the latest literary trends in their age group, and I still delight in introducing them to some of my favorites from the past. Admittedly, sometimes we just indulge in good old guilty-pleasure reading, enjoying our discussions as much as the reading itself.

Thus my summer reading frenzy of the four Twilight series books and the chance to dish with Jenny over the movie they spawned. It may not be great literature, but anything that tightens the bond with my daughters is nothing to sneer at!

Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader