My husband is reading The Secret Garden (<<>> )aloud to our kids. They are at the part where Mary has told Colin that she's found the garden her mother loved. It's an exciting moment. But the passage I'm waiting for is a few chapters on, after Colin has tasted his first breaths of fresh air and Mary has grown strong running in the garden. It's just a detail, but my kids will notice it: a delicious description of toasted potatoes and eggs. We have a tradition of trying foods from the books we read aloud. It started when we read Elizabeth Enright's The Saturdays, and one of the boys asked, "What are petit fours ?" An answer, my husband and I felt, wouldn't be as good as a sample. So one Saturday we all sat down having tea and little cakes, covered with pink, green, and yellow. It was exciting for the kids to try a dessert they had learned about in a book. The petit fours they tried didn't tell them what it was like to live in New York City 60 years ago, but tasting them made the book's words alive. Later, when we read C.S.Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, we had _ . We read The Penderwicks, written by Jeanne Birdsall, and had gingerbread .We read Paddington Bear and tried marmalade . Soon we will reach the part of The Secret Garden where Mary, Colin, and Dickon roast potatoes and eggs in a small oven  in the earth. My kids will go out into the woods to find the perfect place for an oven of our own. Yes, we've eaten potatoes and eggs, but never in the open air. The world that a good book creates is whole and real, but it lies flat on the page until a reader gives life to it. The text is written mainly to   _  .
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