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I’ve written other posts about how grateful I am for comic books, which motivated both of my own kids to start reading on their own. Since then, graphic novels, the extended version of comic books, have really taken off. We have whole sections of the library dedicated to them, both fiction and nonfiction, and geared for every age group. My daughter’s own bookshelf is overflowing with the rebooted Babysitter’s Club series, and books by Raina Telgemeier and Svetlana Chmakova. And lately my husband has been reading the science fiction graphic novel series Aldebaran in French, as a fun way to learn new French vocabulary. (The ESL book club I co-lead is planning to read a graphic novel soon for the same reason. It’s a great way to learn common idioms and spoken language, without a lot of overwhelming descriptive text).

But in addition to graphic novels, we have an enormous collection of comic strip books, including Garfield, Fox Trot, and Baby Blues. These are books that my kids both pored over as they learned to read, and still can’t bear to part with. My tween still happily brings them along for car rides, and laughs just as hard at them as she did when she was 8 or 9. Among them are most of the Calvin and Hobbes books, which my husband and I bought for ourselves as adults, and which we love every bit as much as our kids do.

There’s something so timeless and universal about Calvin and Hobbes. It’s humbling to read the strips as an adult (and especially as a parent), because Bill Watterson shines such a painfully bright light on how dull the world of grown-ups can be, compared to the limitless and ever-questioning world of childhood, with all of its many terrors, injustices, and adventures.

So I wrote this song in honor of Calvin and Hobbes. I hope you enjoy it.

Me and the Tiger

We pack every day,

With questions and battles,

Adventures and play.

And all of of the grown-ups

They can’t understand,

That life’s so much more

Than the routines they’ve planned.

They just see a toy

And they think it’s pretend.

They don’t know the magic

You find with a friend.

But me and the Tiger

We make our own rules,

Our world’s more than homework,

And bedtime, and schools.

And when we don’t like things,

We simply defy them,

Or build new inventions

To transmogrify them.

My Mom and Dad think

That it’s all in my head,

They can’t see the monster

That’s under my bed.

But I will sleep soundly,

My best friend beside me,

To laugh with, and argue,

And comfort, and guide me

Through all the adventures

And wonders we’ll see,

When a new day arrives

For my Tiger and me.

What books do you and your family treasure? Please let me know in the comments.