Books Were My World, and Still Are

When I was a kid I spent most of my time doing things alone. There weren’t many kids around who were my age. My parents both worked. “Playdate” had not made its way into any parent’s vernacular. I hand sewed dresses for my dolls with fabric scraps. I painstakingly made paper sashes for my international doll collection and staged my very own Miss Universe pageant. I wrote poems and short stories. I made mix tapes by holding up my old tape recorder to the radio and struggled to hit stop before the deejay talked. It infuriated me when the deejay broke in before the song ended. Sometimes I laid in my bed and daydreamed about being famous, for what I hadn’t yet determined. I agonized over my signature and practiced my autograph on every inch of bare paper I could find. I putzed a lot. I grew tired of my own company and itched to lose my own skin.

My parents were gone a lot. My older brother had friends in the neighborhood. He also had a big television in his bedroom to keep him company. Once in a while we’d peek out of our respective bedrooms to see what the other was up to. We both must have yearned for some company but didn’t know how to express ourselves. We weren’t from a house of expression; it was more a house of co-existence. In these happenstance moments we might have played War or Life or Parchesi. We fiddled with his model cars or listened to music. On these occasions my brother, who grew up to be a music fiend, would transcribe lyrics for me so I’d stop bastardizing perfectly good songs. I’d read his stick neat print and commit those lyrics to memory. To this day I still know all the words to the Cure’s Killing an Arab because of him. He also introduced me to Albert Camus, whose book The Stranger inspired the song. In these moments my days were less empty.

But still, for the most part, I was lonely.

When I tired of putzing and moping and daydreaming, I read. I lost myself in books, cliche as it sounds. Books saved me and spared my sanity. Books fed me a steady diet of emotion and tenderness and adventure. I read many books over and over again. I memorized lines the way most people memorize movie quotes. Books inspired me and showed me a new world that was to be mine if I simply waited. Some of the books that moved me as a child are finding their way into Bird’s backpack now. We’re reading some of my favorites together, and through him, we have discovered new tales. In fact, I might be the biggest Kate DiCamillo fan in our house.

It jolts me to read some of my favorites again as a 42-year old woman. Part of me is transported to Crestfield Court in my tiny room at the front of the house. I am moved to tears every time I read Sounder or Bridge to Terabithia. I laugh aloud at Ramona and cringe through most things Judy Blume. It’s actually quite delightful to reread my childhood favorites. I can’t begin to articulate what it’s like to see these books come to life in my son’s eyes. Rather remarkable, really. Magical even.

Here are some of the books that shaped my very being. What childhood books left a mark on you?

The Bridge to Terabithia

The Outsiders

A Wrinkle in Time

Everything by Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume

All Summer in a Day (short story that haunts me still)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Charlotte’s Web

The Borrowers

Sounder

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Old Yeller

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The Secret Garden

The Chronicles of Narnia