Every night, our son is looking forward to bedtime. Not to sleep, but to hear me read books and tell stories. When we came back from Sweden I brought a suitcase full of Swedish children’s books, most of which I got when I was a child myself, so now we have a newly stocked library with lots of new and old books to enjoy before sleeping. It is fascinating to relive my own childhood through the eyes of my son, to re-experience my favorite children’s books while remembering the stories and images as if it was yesterday that my mum read the books to me.
Amazingly, what I remember was the book that fascinated me the most when I was a child is the same book that recently my son has wanted me to read over and over again. It is a big format book created by Richard Scarry with lots of images, divided into many different stories. There are all sorts of animals experiencing funny situations in everyday life, different animals in different stories but one little earthworm called Dagge (from the Swedish word for earthworm, daggmask) is to be found in every story and has become my son’s favorite character. As it happens, I have a little stuffed animal Dagge that my mum sent my son when we were still living in Tokyo, and this my son remembered and Dagge is now a part of our bedtime routine.
One afternoon the past week when I went to meet my son coming home from his kindergarten, he stepped off the bus with a blue paper creation in his hand, wanting to give it to me even before he said sayonara to his teacher. And as soon as the bus left he told me that he had made Dagge at his kindergarten and that it was a present for me and that I needed to carefully carry Dagge all the way home. It made me so happy, and now we have two little earthworms coming to our bedtime story session at night.
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So good for Dagge (both Dagges) to have company! I think the stuffed Dagge looks like Robin Hood, because of the hat. The blue Dagge that your son created at the kindergarten looks like an earthworm. 🙂
I could not agree more 😀