Do you remember the Little Bear books, I ask my 21-year-old son. “That was the very first book I ever read,” he tells me.

I’d forgotten that.

Else Holmelund Minarik has died at the age of 91. Those books were very popular when I was a girl; it was the very first I Can Read Book. Elsa Holmelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated respectively these lovely, simple stories.

There was one called “Birthday Soup,” Who can forget “Birthday Soup.” Little Bear can’t find his mother and assumes that she has forgotten his birthday.

Guests are set to arrive and there is no cake in sight. So Little Bear prepares a birthday soup Just as everyone is about to sit down for birthday soup, Mother Bear shows up with a big, beautiful birthday cake. “I never did forget your birthday, and I never will,” she says.

To my son I say: I will never forget the first book you ever read. I promise.