Children's Section of Barnes and Noble Bookstore - Michael Mancha

As I walk into Barnes and Noble Bookstore I head towards a place that I often pass by but rarely enter. It’s a place that has limited interest to me yet on this day I venture straight in.
The children’s section of the famed bookstore is actually quite larger than I realized and as I walk through the entrance I immediately take notice of all the children, some very young and some approaching teen years, searching, reading or being read to.
I take a walk around the area gazing from shelf to shelf and take note of the enormous variety of books. Storybooks, picture books, activity books, and so on. I move over a few sections and see older kids and a rack full of short stories and small novels about everything from school and friends, drama and adventure, mystics and fantasy, and young love.
I notice a pair of young girls, 11 years old or so, sitting on the floor, both with the same book in their hands. I think about the friendship they will grow through the simple, vicarious actions of a fictional character.
I sit in a small chair and begin to watch the parents whose heads are poking above the bookshelves. Young mothers, mothers of multiple children, and a whole families here together on a weekend afternoon. I wonder who talks about them – the parents actually raising their children right. The media loves to talk about parents who abuse, abandon, neglect or even kill their children but rarely you see anything about these parents.
I would tell their story. I would talk about the parents who take the time and effort to instill the priceless ethic of knowledge and growth into their children. I would tell their story because, ironically, there are so many parents who share this story and so little who relate with those who kill their children.
Before I leave I am compelled to walk to the poetry section and seek out my favorite poet as a child and then there it is, Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I pick it up and immediately think to myself one thing – I am going to read this to my new baby.