The Pussycat Tiger

Allow me, if I may, to take a passage from the Bible out of context. Revelations 1:3 says "Blessed is the one who reads..."

Admittedly, the passage refers specifically to the prophetic book of Revelations, not to reading in general. Yet I believe that it is a divine truth that reading is a blessed activity, that God shines upon those who delight in the act of curling up with the written word.

I was always a very small child, rail thin, very bookish. I suppose I was a nerd before nerds were cool. Bottle-thick glasses, freckles...the works.

Of course, I was always quite conscious of my (real or perceived) frailty. Then my mom read me The Pussycat Tiger. I don't know the author--it was a My Little Golden Book. It told the story of a tiger cub, ridiculed by all of the animals of the jungle for his small size and weak growl. Yet his mother told him, "If you eat lots of tiger food and take lots of tiger naps, one day you'll grow up to be a great big tiger."

The moral, of course, was that I wouldn't always be a small, slight child, that one day I'd grow up to be a man, secure in my own skin and able to conquer my own little world just as The Pussycat Tiger eventually did...if only I believed in myself "and ate lots of tiger food and took lots of tiger naps." A simplistic view of life? Perhaps. Yet it remains for me, these many years later, a valuable lesson in self-esteem, taught by a tattered, rail-thin book read to me by my loving mother in the warm glow of a nightlight.

What book got you hooked? Go to FirstBook and share your story--and share it with us here.