Books

Beyond the treasured picture books of earliest childhood, my first significant books were blue, red, and orange. The red books were a set of encyclopedias, small enough for a child’s hand, archaic and not visually interesting, but an alphabetical world of their own. The blue were the Harvard Classics, row upon row of sleek, well bound beauty, chock full of great reading.

Initially, the red and the blue were large blocks to build cities on the edges of the two well-worn oriental rugs at the staircase end of the living room. The space between the rugs served as road, the blue and red books, pre-Lego, made buildings. But when play waned on a rainy afternoon, the blue books had stories that my older brother could read out loud long before I was able to decipher words.

The orange book was a heavy volume by Richard Haliburton. In later life I have read that he was something of a sensationalist, not all his stories to be believed. But to the beginning reader, Haliburton’s volume was a window into a whole world. The pyramids, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Himalayas, the steep Lhassa world of Tibet and the wonders of China. In a mere afternoon one could scale mountains, wander cities, and get totally lost.

Starting school was a huge disappointment. I returned from the first day hugely upset. The teacher did not teach me to read. In fact, the whole of first grade was filled with insipid see-and-say nonsense of “See Dick run, etc.” I already knew these books and their sequels. My brother had been sick at home some of his second grade year and we had his school readers. In fact, reading throughout elementary school was quite frustrating. Why would one read around the circle of reading group when one could launch out into the deep on ones own and not have to wait turns? School was to be tolerated, but home was where the real books lived. And the library, that wonderful world down the street from school, where with a buff colored card any book was available.

The issue was that home and library did not dictate or limit what or how long a child could read. School did. Stupid school!

A grandfather who worked successively with Dodd, Meade, and G&C Merriam made sure the home book shelves were full. A school teacher grandmother added more, as did parents, aunts, and family friends. Biographies, histories, fiction, adventure, theology. No book was unwelcome. A book-of-the month subscription was the treasured gift of my eighth birthday. Twelve whole months of glorious mail watching!

Before my teens my father began to hand me books he liked. Sometimes he’d add a warning that I “might not like all of it, but read on through till you do.” The next almost twenty years were a shared reading adventure. The last more than twenty years have been years of regret that the sharing stopped.

A college course in children’s literature was a summer personal treat and left me with a distinct and snobbish taste when I began to buy books for my own children. “A good children’s book is one that an adult can read and enjoy also.” “Examine the pictures – make sure the art is well done and enhances the story.” No Disney or Golden Book fluff for my girls.

Living outside the USA at times presented a challenge. No trip to the city was complete without a visit to the National Book Store where one could find excellent books from English speaking countries around the world. In another city, in one year, we read all the English books in the local library. Good we moved after that.

When the Dreamer was a pre-schooler, we launched two series I’d missed as a child, reading out loud at night: Laura Ingalls’ Little House books and C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series. Before first grade we’d read all of them out loud. Then the Driver arrived and we did it again. And then the Dragon needed her own run through the dozen or so volumes. By that time the Dreamer and Driver were mature personal readers, but somehow bedtime found them sprawled on the floor beside the little Dragon and me, quite willing for a repeat performance.

In the end, my childhood home was filled with books. Boxes and boxes were stacked in the attic while every possible shelf of the house was full upstairs and down. When it came time to sell the house, we all picked out our favorites in an orgy of self-expression and personal satisfaction. Friends came and asked for specific books or autographed copies on favorite topics. Boxes of fiction and history were handed to local libraries.

And still, like the loaves and fishes, there were over a hundred boxes of theological books left, a heritage of parents and grandparents who loved the Book of books, and who voraciously studied what others wrote. I loaded up a truck and ferried all hundred boxes to the university where my father had taught.

My own home groans with books. Old treasures read and reread many times, study volumes from generations past, new books hot off the press. Even with a continual weeding, re-gifting, and trips to the huge local library donation bin, they seem to grow like mushrooms in a wet woods. I vow to get rid of the books before my daughters have to deal with them, but time will tell if that actually happens.

Meanwhile, the Dreamer’s little ones are already deep into the Little House books. On a recent visit, they pulled The House on Plum Creek from their suitcase and settled in beside me, three plus and not yet two, fresh from their baths and ready for bed. “You can read more than one chapter, Grammy,” the older one instructed me. “Daddy does. He reads lots and lots.”

Bless his book-loving heart! He can’t even claim their heredity.