HOW I CELEBRATED NATIONAL CHILDREN’S BOOK WEEK

You can spot Charlie’s Corner bookstore in San Francisco’s Noe Valley by the line up of strollers on the sidewalk out front. Five times a day they serve up storytime delights to an SRO audience of kids and their caretakers.

Our two-year old grandson is a regular on the mushroom stools there and each time we visit we are blown away by a program that includes books and puppets and music, usually led the proprietor, Charlotte Nagy aka Charlie. There’s this sense of community: storytime begins with a song that welcomes each child by name. And love of books: each book is read in “voices” that fully animate the text.

From a perch on a mushroom stool, I had dreamed that Little Wolf’s First Howling might someday be part of a Charlie’s Corner storytime. So I asked Candlewick, my publisher, if we could line up a reading when the birth of our second grandson prompted another visit to San Francisco.

Unbeknownst to me, Charlie had already picked up on Little Wolf’s scent. She was reading an advance copy at storytimes, howling along with kids to it several times a day. Charlie dons her own wolf headgear for the readings. She told us every howling session is different, depending on the “wolves” any given day.

My visit was smack dab in the middle of National Children’s Book Week. When I met Charlie, she greeted me with, “We love your book.” Turns out she had hoped that the author of Little Wolf would come to visit all the while I was hoping to be a visitor. We decided to split up the reading. She took the part of Little Wolf, reading his howls with gusto and panache.

Charlie suggested we finish up with You are My Little Wolf (to the tune of You are My Sunshine). My grandson Emmett stepped forward to strum the ukulele as I played the chords. Yet another dream come true. Altogether my favorite celebration of Children’s Book Week ever. Thanks to all the Charlie’s Corner gang – Elise, Christine, Katharine, Jeffrey, and Tiffany, and most especially to Charlie herself – for a howling good time.