January is predictable in that it tends to circle back each year with its invitation: begin again, or begin better. Life recalibrates and in that suspended period during the festive season, we pay attention to what we have, what we may have overlooked and who we are or want to be.

Perhaps that’s also why we enjoy returning to that one picture book. The one you keep selecting, or your child asks for repeatedly. Its pages are probably chewed, softened at the edges, or falling out, while its rhythms of reassurance are embedded in memory. You’ve read it enough times to recite it and, most likely, you do.

There’s something mesmerising about the stories that circle back to us – or that we circle to find. They are rituals and anchors in the sense that they help us name the unnameable: fear, change, love, hope. It’s not only the children listening who are held by them, but also those reading aloud in the half-light, turning familiar pages with tired hands, who find steadiness and joyful, innocent surprise, a chance to feel something again, or see it more clearly.

Take Mac Barnett’s Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, illustrated by Jon Klassen. On the surface, it’s a story about two people searching for something spectacular. They dig and dig, yet keep missing the treasure that is so obvious to readers. It’s funny, playful, but also true. How often do we do the same? In January, however, we permit ourselves to take a break from digging to notice what is hiding under the momentum of life.

In William Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, a donkey makes a wish and is turned into a rock, separated from his family, his voice, himself. He waits, helpless, and when the wish is finally undone, he returns to the same ordinary life, but now, it feels miraculous. Or Gene Zion’s Harry the Dirty Dog. Harry runs away from home, but when he returns, covered in dirt, his family doesn’t recognise him. He realises that what he really wanted was the love and acceptance of his family at home, even if it wasn’t as exciting as the adventure. It carries that truth we often forget: the things we think we want aren’t always the things that bring us home.

In the mischief of Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard, we see the same emotional shape where something familiar disappears. In its place, something else arrives, and when the original returns, the world hasn’t changed, but we have.

Julia Donaldson’s books – The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom, and The Snail and the Whale – thrive on that return, on rhythm and on the satisfying resolution that brings us back to where we started, only wiser. The clever mouse circles back through danger to safety. The witch reclaims her broom, but with more friends than before. The snail, who longs to travel, sets off on the tail of a whale, affirming that even the smallest voice can make a difference in this world, and still find its way home.

So if you catch yourself reaching for that same picture book to read to a child, trust it. These are stories that say: the world may wobble, but we can find our way back. We can begin again, only better.

A thought to hold:

What picture book do you return to often? What could it be showing you now that you didn’t see before?

Photo by Jennifer Kalenberg on Unsplash