I've been really eager to see The Polar Express soon, even if by myself, but now I'm not sure I want to ruin the memories.

Go to the library or buy the book, and read it first, especially if you have little ones. Go for the hardcover if you can afford it. Somehow I have a deluxe, cloth-covered, jacket-less hardcover version I haven't seen anywhere else.

I was reading that to/with my son long before he could read. He'd stop my page-turning to study each vivid detail of the beautiful drawings, and he'd giggle when I tried to sound like Santa or the conductor, or jingled the jingle bells we hang on the back of the door. He cried the first time he saw the page where the little boy is sad on the train ride home (won't ruin the story, for those who don't know it yet).

We'd read it almost every night during Advent and Christmas. Even later, when he was "too old" for it, when he was in middle school, he'd ask me to read it to him at Christmastime, and we'd both remember what it was like to be younger.

Of course, he's too old for me to take to see the movie now. He can't believe that I want to see it. Perhaps it's just as well, to leave the story on those pages and in my mind's eye, as I remember it. As we remember it.