I spent the weekend on the Clarion river, tubing, carried by the current…thinking about kids and reading…and thinking lots about small things. In Bill Bryson’s book, A Walk in the Woods (which makes a great read aloud chapter book for kids 8 and up)…he says that when you’ve been walking long distances in the woods, the smallest things can produce a low-level of ecstasy.

I like the sound of that - low level ecstasy – and how it pertains to the quiet joys of reading chapter books. I certainly felt low level ecstasy reading Gertrude Chandler Warner to my children, and in turn listening to them read her sentences aloud to me. And there were many time in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe Narnia Series, when I felt the same.

Mostly these were smaller moments in the books. Not the big crescendo’s or the epic battles or the rescue scenes. No, it was in the well drawn character, or the simple gesture perfectly drawn that I could feel myself begin, inside, to vibrate at the low levels of ecstasy.

Tubing, floating down the river, you come slowly upon the bank, witnessing one small miracle after another. The river plays a game of hide and seek with you, if you let it. The currents turn your tube, first one way, then another. But around ever turn, and sometimes just on the other side of the next rock – or maybe it is the next rock itself where you witness a piece of nature’s beauty. It could even be the way a shaft of light, newly revealed by a passing cloud illuminates a bank full of grasses shifting in the breeze. Or the startling red of a cardinal flower so vibrant in the summer sun that it makes you want to cry. Or the soaring spiral of a bald eagle casting it’s shadow on the glassy surface of the river.

Each moment is so small and so large at the same time. Each moment is joy beyond boundless joy – expressing to you the pure happiness of being alive.

This is the same joy of turning the page with your child as you read together before bed. “I’ll read a page and you’ll read a page.” And you look down and see your child’s small hand grip the edges of the book, and hear her sure voice float smoothly across the bobbing waters of vowels and consonant that have never before passed her lips in the same way.

Low levels of ecstasy pass in front of us in every momen when there are children in our lives.

Enjoy these chapter book reading days. They are precious beyond all that is precious on this earth. Just let the river carry you.