Minh Lê: Revisiting favorite children’s books

One of the things I love about children’s books is they kind of grow with you over time. When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams, I experienced it from a certain perspective, from the child’s perspective. And what’s interesting is now revisiting it and reading it with my two children, it’s like suddenly I’m seeing it from a different angle and like have new appreciation for the mother in the story, and the hard work that she’s doing.

It’s interesting to me to have a book reveal new layers of meaning over time and that’s one of the things I love about picture books just there, there’s so much there for you to discover, and that it’s not going to be the same book each time you read it. And I always tell people that for me one of the power of children’s books is that it is like a friend that you get to travel with through the course of your life. 

So you read a book when you’re a child and then you revisit it, it’s almost like a marker for your own personal growth and to see like how much you’ve changed over time dependent on like your interaction with this one work of art that you’ve had since you were a child.