I have this very instant ordered The National Review Treasury of Classic Children’s Literature and The National Review Treasury of Classic Bedtime Stories. Not that my children deserve such fine volumes.
In the car yesterday on the way to school:
ANDREW (age 7): Dad, I found this really, really old penny, and I’m taking it in for show-and-tell.
SELF (at the wheel): Really old? What’s the year?
ANDREW (reading the date with help from his two older brothers): Nineteen fifty-seven.
EDITA (age 12): Wow, that’s, like, antique!
SELF: Andrew, you can tell your classmates that your penny was minted in the same year in which your father was born.
EDITA (after all four children produce gasps of astonishment): You’re kidding.
The NR Classics under the tree. But in their stockings? Lumps of coal.