Dad's excellent adventures.

When my mother and father came back to Chicago after World War II and found an apartment, the first piece of furniture my father bought for his family was a carved mahogany bookcase. As his children came along, he stacked it with clothbound editions of classic stories: Tom Sawyer, Hans Brinker, Robin Hood, Kidnapped, Tales of the Arabian Nights, books with eight or 10 delicious full-color illustrations scattered throughout. Some books possessed matching cardboard cases they slid neatly into. They even smelled good: books as feasts for the senses. "Read us for a real adventure!" they called from their shelves.

I now see all this as a sign of trust: the beautiful little bookcase, the fine editions bought on a working man's salary, and especially the stories themselves. Dad trusted that we would enter the worlds of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, and appreciate what we found there. When he finally had a house and a basement, he brought what we called the "record player" down near his workbench and trusted us with the words of the poetry records that boomed up the steep stairs: "The Highwayman came riding, riding, riding/The Highwayman came riding up to the old inn door." Or sometimes Shakespeare floated up, in the marvelous voice of Richard Burton, "To be or not to be...." Dad was no snob. He came to trust even long-haired '60s poets like Lennon and McCartney, and Simon and Garfunkel. My mother had a winter coat that he particularly loathed. "For Pete's sake," he would say, "get rid of that Eleanor Rigby coat, will you?"

In this month's special book section, Brian Wildsmith, a world-class artist of children's picture books, explains why we should trust our children with only the best, in art and story. And award-winning children's author Katherine Paterson notes that good fiction cannot be tamed: "No one, least of all the writer, knows what a reader will take away from a story. The meaning of a story must be entrusted to the reader of whatever age." Is it beautiful? Is it true? Then read it to a child you love, and leave the rest to God.

Today, as I read to my own kids, I see the questions that bubble beneath the story lines: Why am I here? Do I belong? Am I loved? Why did that have to happen? Can I be forgiven? "George promised to be good," writes H.A. Rey in Curious George, "but little monkeys sometimes forget." Don't we all? Peter Rabbit's mother tells him to steer clear of Mr. McGregor's garden because "Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor." Of course, he goes anyway. Tom Sawyer stages his own death, and then realizes he has broken Aunt Polly's heart with grief. But it comes out all right in the end, for George, for Peter, and for Tom. You do belong. You are loved. You are forgiven. Thanks, Dad.