When I was four-years-old, my Aunt Catherine, an elementary
school teacher, bought me a ticket on the Reading Railroad when she taught me
to read and I can’t get off. Nor do I
want to. I have read in planes trains
and automobiles; in libraries, lecture halls and the labor rooms. In fact, our daughter’s birth was accompanied
by the word music of E.L. Doctorow’s The
Book of Daniel, a mesmerizing novel which
I finished just as a maternity nurse wheeled me into a labor room at Magee-Woman’s
Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA.
Three years
later, at the same hospital, and fresh on a Super Bowl X victory (Steelers 21,
Cowboys 17), our son entered this world while a Celtic tune hummed through my
head. The day before his birth, I had finished Leon Uris’s Trinity.
Books are my brain food pyramid with four nutritional
groups: Information, Ideas, Escape and Engagement. They are my instant getaway
when I need a Mental Myopia break from the highs and lows of my daily life, and
they are the reason my sleep is unbalanced.
Sometimes I’m not sure whether I live to read or read to live.
About fifteen years ago, I was waiting outside of Borders for
my husband to appear with his armload of books. I hoisted myself up onto a stone ledge surrounding some shrubbery and opened Anna Quindlen’sHow Reading Changed My life. As one of
her most fervent fans (Black and Blue,
One True Thing, Object Lessons), I planned on using this memoir in my English
classes to urge my recalcitrant readers to buy a ticket on the Reading Railroad.
I never expected her words would punch me in the stomach with a Déjà vu experience.
She described how one of her greatest pleasures was to sprawl
in a club chair in her living room and lose herself in the characters’ escapades
and emotions in that day’s novel. Quindlen’s mother’s mantra, “It’s a beautiful
day. All of your friends are outside,” would burst Anna’s book bubble as
effectively as my new kitten’s claws would a balloon.
When I read these words, my heart thumped against my ribs,
my hands shook and the hair on the nape of my neck jumped to attention. Had
Anna Quindlen somehow mined my brain for memories? From the type of chair to
its location by the fireplace to the way she flopped in it-her head on one arm
and her legs hanging over the sides of the other- to her mother’s words, she
was describing any vacation or weekend day from my life.
Like Anna, I, too was a normal kid. I had my sisters and a
plethora of friends to accompany me through real-life. We’d build forts in the
woods where we’d wage battle on the boys’ citadels, go on day-long bike hikes-alas,
they were the cause of three of my four concussions- explore abandoned houses
and new construction on the college campus and bring Nancy Drew dramas to life.
“I don't believe in
the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can
happen when you read a good book.”
~ J.K. Rowling
~ J.K. Rowling
Still…still, each and every day I’d always crawl back into
the pages of a book. Every Monday afternoon, I’d stroll to the town library
four blocks away for an armload of books to get me through the next seven days.
Oh, how I loved curling up in one of leather chairs and dig into Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud
Montgomery or another story of the trials and tribulations of a fictional
counterpart while surreptitiously chewing on a Sugar Daddy caramel taffy
lollipop. Outside, a summer shower pelted
the blacktop streets creating an acrid asphalt steam that would try, but
fail to cling to the tail of the refreshing rain-drenched air.
Some afternoons, my friends and I would gather on one of our
porches and spread out the books that we had bought through those monthly book-buying
flyers that teachers handed out during the school year. While sipping our 8 or 12 ounce
bottles of Coke and munching on penny candy from the local Mom and Pop store on
the corner, The Sweet Shop, or a slice of pizza from Harry’s Pizza down the
street, we’d spark deals by enthusing about the books we wanted to barter.
As I grew up, boys took over the Number 1 spot on my list of
favorite things. It didn’t take me too many close encounters of the not for me
kind- guys who read only the sports pages of The Indiana Evening Gazette or The
Pittsburgh Press-to realize that I was more attracted to Renaissance boys. They
wanted to talk about books and ideas as well as play sports and chat about
Pirate baseball and Steeler football.
Although we didn’t have the time or mental energy to read
for pleasure during college(me) and college followed by graduate school (him),
my husband and I carted boxes of books into our first apartment after we married.
This drill multiplied with each of our subsequent fifteen moves, including the
40+ boxes of books the movers lugged into our current home in 1995.
Considering the thousands of books stuffed into floor to
ceiling shelves in every room but the living room, I shudder to think how many
boxes will leave with us when we downsize next year. My nightmares include multiple trips to
libraries and used book stores.
Not for one day after the age of four did I doubt that books
would form the backbone of my life. My daydreams during college education
classes took me to classrooms where I saw myself surrounded by students, each
and every one of them as avid about the magic of words that I was. Although these dreams shattered when I smacked
into the Reality Wall of teaching, I never gave up trying to turn my charges
into bookaholics.
I piled one double-shelf bookcase on top of another in the
back of my classroom, filled them with books my husband, children and I had
read and wanted to share and urged my students to read, read, read. My heart sang when a few chose a novel on
Reading Fridays that so pulled them into the story that they wanted to keep on reading when we
had to move on to another segment. And when
students stopped by after class or during lunch to talk about a book that
enthralled them, I found myself so captivated by their experiences that I’d put
down my own novel to listen to them.
The other day, an article in The Herndon Patch caught my eye,
Suggested
Summer Reading Lists for Your 6th-12th Grader, by the editor, Jennifer van der Kleut (http://herndon.patch.com/groups/summer/p/suggested-summer-reading-lists-for-your-6th12th-grader_21f4118d?ncid=newsltuspatc00000001&evar4=picks-1-post). Her short article included links to the
county’s reading lists for 6th-12th graders, lists that
were adjuncts to those required by individual schools. My anticipation spiked as I clicked on the
various links, especially those for high school kids.
“Wow!” I enthused as I skimmed
the extensive topics that I could research on those days when I wanted to find
a good read but didn’t have time to search through the Amazon or Barnes and
Noble sites. Nirvana!
This thought was quelled when those
ever-present reality checkers dumped a metaphoric bucket of icy water on my
head and chortled, “Do you really think that kids will actually click on a
topic, not to mention scrutinize the Internet for a few book possibilities?”
“Yes!” I flung back as I shook
away the taunt, even though, after 30+ years teaching I knew that the majority
of teens would wait till the end of
summer, if at all, to crack open even one book cover.
“Yes!” I retorted, believing
that at least one book from one of the topics would hook the attention of each
young person in the county.
“Yes!” I shouted, as I held up The Gate Thief by Orson Scott card in
one hand and Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline in the other while balancing
And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled
Hosseini on my head.
“Books are the plane,
and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They
are home.”
~ Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
~ Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
And what a voyage
they offer.
Until next week,
Happy Reading,
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