ABSTRACT
Such a child, surrounded by books, has parents who are always reading books, too, and reading with great absorption. In fact sometimes the baby will have to pull the parent away from the parent’s book towards the child’s book, very much as sometimes the child will pull the mother away from the father, and towards himself (for by now the book is the child – Sam is inside this book; this book is about Sam; read it, look at me, pay attention!). In addition, the very fact that the parent is looking at his own book, means that a book is part of grown-upness, to be imitated and admired. In this family, for a child not to want to look at books would be odd, and seen perhaps as something to be worried or sad about.
