Mother let me walk by myself to the library one summer when I was about 9 to get a library card and check out my first book. The librarian Mrs. Moss suggested a book for me. Three days later I was back to get another book. Then a few days after that, I was back. Mrs. Moss told me then that I could take more than one if I would be very careful and bring them back on time.
I started taking home two books and then three. The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, plus Black Beauty and all those books that were available for my age.
I have often wondered just how I developed a desire to read at such an early age. Our daddy was a voracious reader, but he worked out of town all the time. Mother didn’t seem to have time to read, but she always had newspapers and books at our house. My older sister had been a very good reader, the teachers told me, so they expected me to like to read too.
One thing I loved to read from the beginning was the little Bible story cards we received in Sunday School, with a picture on one side and a scripture verse and lesson on the other.
Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul…. You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth. Deut. 11:18-21.NKJV.
God used these little scripture cards to develop the desire to read in my heart, so that I could learn His word.