Make Way for Father’s Day

by Judy Newman

The month of June has always been a mixed bag for me. On the positive side, it includes my very favorite longest day of the year—the Summer Solstice (June 21). My husband Jeff’s birthday is June 15. The Formula One Grand Prix race in Montreal, Canada was an annual June highlight, as was my parents’ wedding anniversary and my mother’s beautiful end-of-school-year luncheons for our classroom teachers from the John Ward School in Newton, MA.

And Father’s Day. As we did with most special days, we went all out for Father’s Day. We started at my grandparents’ house in Brookline, MA, with big dinners that included my great uncles, then in later years we added Jeff, cousins, and family fathers in our generation, and now our Father’s Day celebrants include Sophie Rae’s dad and his contemporaries.

Father’s Day was both joyful and stressful. We loved getting together but once I moved past the clay ashtray and potholder gifts-made-in-school stage, it was rare that I could land that perfect present for my dad. He didn’t want electronics (I don’t believe he ever opened the iPod, iPad, or battery-operated chess game I got him). Clothes were OK as long as they were shirts from Brooks Brothers (size 15½ x 33). But even with the shirts, he wouldn’t take the button downs out of those hard, navy blue, embossed gift boxes for months: he was either savoring the gift or waiting until his current shirts needed to be replaced. In any event, it was stressful for me, who strove to be an excellent gift giver.

But the one gift I could always get right for my dad was books. If Philip Roth had a new book coming out that year, I was golden. He also loved books of poetry by E. E. Cummings and Agatha Christie mysteries. He was a fierce intellectual but also loved to read books by a wide range of novelists from Chaim Potok to Michael Chabon to Liane Moriarty. And the classics: he and my mother read Anna Karenina aloud to each other and they listened to audiobooks including Jim Dale’s magical recordings of the Harry Potter series. When he was in his eighties, he told me he read Fifty Shades of Grey to see what all the fuss was about. When I still lived in Newton, I would go to New England Mobile Book Fair, and in later years to Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, NJ, to find that perfect title for him. It was such a wonderful feeling when he would call me and tell me how much he liked (or even didn’t like but was interested in) that book I got for him.

This will be the first Father’s Day I’ll spend without my own dad who passed away in December at the age of almost 93. My father, a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst—who always had so many children’s books in his waiting room and to interact with in his office—saw patients well into his late eighties and was a voracious reader. I attribute my love of books and reading to him and to my mother—who read aloud to us from when we were babies and always let us choose and own books we wanted to read.

On Father’s Day—and every day—there is nothing quite so satisfying to me as connecting a reader to a wonderful new book. I learned that from you, Dad. Happy Father’s Day!

There are lots of great dads in children’s books. One of my favorites is Mr. Mallard who promises Mrs. Mallard he will be waiting for her and their eight ducklings on the little island in the pond in the Boston Public Gardens in Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings. What are your favorites? Please share with me: jnewman@Scholastic.com.

XX,
Judy 

Judy Newman is President and Reader-in-Chief of Scholastic Book Clubs. For more information, visit judynewmanatscholastic.com.