Starting Out:Reading and Being Read To

"The first thing I can well remember..." Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Why do some books stay with us long past their first reading? Especially books from childhood- books many people assume we outgrow, and becoming older readers, move on from.I mark time by what I was reading. I can't remember a time when I didn't do this, or when the name of a book didn't evoke a strong related image or memory.

One of my earliest vivid memories is of reading 'Charlotte's Web' by E.B. White with my mother. I am about 4 years old. This is the first book I will remember both having read TO me and then picking up and reading for myself.

I see the pale blue paint of my bedroom and the pastel colored flowers on the wallpaper. I can see Gareth William's simple, but detailed line drawings which somehow convey so perfectly the messy ribbon in Fran's ponytail, the bristly hairs on a pig's back, the cunning eye of a clever rat.

When I look at these pictures now, I marvel at how I can see them in the same way as I did then- with an absolute certainty and clarity that is also part of the that first early memory of reading.There are very good reasons why this is the first book that many people remember reading or having read to them.

My mother gave me all three of E.B White's wonderful children's books: Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. I remember having each one read aloud to me and then pouring over the pages on my own and then one day, I was just reading them. All on my own.

 Each of these books tells a story about a misfit : a lonely pig who is loved by both a girl and a spider, a mouse who lives like a small person within a caring family (one of the best things about this book is how the fact that Stuart is a mouse is taken so perfectly in stride by his family), but who longs for adventure, and a swan whose story is an updated version of the Ugly Duckling, a swan looking for his voice and to fit into his world.

These are perfect examples of a subtle and superbly skilled writer practicing his craft. I didn't know anything about E.B. White when I read these books. I'm not sure if I even realized at that point that actual people WROTE books. Later in life I would read many of E.B. White's literary essays and realize that my early children's books in no way talked down to my age or restricted this talented from writing at the top of his game.

And these books taught me so many lessons!

Even at such a young age, the sacrifice of Charlotte and her selflessness taught me that happy endings are not always completely happy and that sometimes we have to work harder to help someone else.

Stuart Little taught me that the love and perfect acceptance of a family is a great and valuable thing- but also a launching point to send you out into a world of adventures and a safe haven to welcome you back again.

Louis the swan finds friendship from Sam, who takes him to school and helps to pay his father's debt of a stolen trumpet and in the process taught me about the value of both belonging and having loyal friends- and at the same time the importance of valuing yourself and your uniqueness, something which each of these books celebrates.

These three books, they are the real beginning for me. I know there were board books and picture books that came before them and believe me there are many more that came after. But E.B. White was my first real love and Charlotte's Web was the first book I read aloud to my son.

This is just a short post. One, I hope, of many more to come. But we all have to start somewhere, and for me, that start is Charlotte's Web.

To Start With- I Owe It All To My Mom and Dad

"Books are an uniquely portable magic"- Stephen King

My love affair with the written word was the product of my parents who were each voracious readers in their own way and whose literary habits I absorbed through osmosis. Much modern research now tells us that to raise children who read, you must have reading material in the home- books, newspapers, magazines, anything. Anything that the child can see adults reading and pattern themselves after. Of course reading aloud is a key component as well. If anyone doubts that those two things will produce a lifelong reader, I can only hold myself up as an irrefutable example.

My mother read magazines and novels almost as constantly as I did. She made trips to the library and would buy books as gifts for my father, then secretly read them first, because she didn't want to wait until he had finished them. I woke up many times in the night as a child and would wander into the hallway and look into the living room to see my mother curled up under an afghan under the light of a table lamp, reading through the night.

Neither of my parents went to college. But they were both excellent examples of intelligent people who lived intellectual lives through reading. My father and mother both loved horror novels and were early supporters of Stephen King. They read both fiction and non-fiction, but always with an emphasis on discussion and imagination and reaching out of our everyday world in a small Ohio town to a bigger place that encompassed all of time and history and anything you could dream of, from vampires to vacation destinations.

 I remember my mother bringing home stacks of library books: history, like Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, popular bestsellers like Centennial by James A. Michener, romance novels, and magazines (I was not allowed to check out the copies of Cosmo she brought home, which led me to believe that they must be REALLY dirty).

My father read less frequently, but intently. He read the paper, like most dads I knew. He also had a deep love of science and history. In the late Seventies and early Eighties, I remember my father reading metaphysical science; books like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by  Robert M. Pirsig and The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav. There was a point in my childhood if my dad even mentioned the words 'quantum mechanics', my mother, brother and I would all groan and threaten to leave the table.

In my childhood, I feel that I can safely say that I read literally thousands of books. I read at the dinner table (until reprimanded), in the bathtub (I stopped taking showers when I realized that baths would provide me with an extra half hour of reading time before bed), under the covers with a flashlight, on vacations in the back seat of the car (I taught myself not to get carsick out of sheer willpower and the impending boredom of not being able to read on the highway) and in boring classes at school, hiding the book under the edge of the desk. (I now suspect that many of my teachers knew this, but they also knew I was bored and I wasn't causing any trouble, so they never stopped me). My mother, an avid and encouraging reader, was constantly telling me to "Put down that book and GO OUTSIDE AND DO SOMETHING!"

I taught myself to roller skate in our driveway while reading, tracing careful ellipses around the cement in retaliation. I would skate and read and skate and read and look up, startled, when my father's pickup truck halted, idling in the street, waiting for me to move out of the way so he could pull into the garage. Dinnertime already?!?

I recently listened to the audio version of The View From The Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman. He is an incredible writer and always a charming and interesting narrator, and this work comprised of many of his speeches, interviews of other writers and non-fiction spanning several years absolutely lived up to my expectations.

But one thing I found most fascinating was the many times he referred to books he had read as a child or a teenager and how that had influenced his thoughts and character and continued to do so even today. I found that we both had an early love of the books of Diana Wynn Jones (more on her later) and it got me thinking:

What books could I really remember? Vividly remember, as if I had just read them? Which books still influenced the way that I thought, spoke, wrote, interacted with others, even today?

I began searching out old titles on the internet and ordering them online, which is easier and faster to do now than ever before. I reread many of these books and found that I could still reread them with absolute enjoyment- now with the added bonus of nostalgia!

This is not a record of all the books I've ever read. I don't think I could even manage to recall them all. But the books I love. The books I have returned to over and over again throughout the years or that have rung true for me when other things have not. These are the books I want to talk to you about. My parents opened a door and introduced me to these life long friends. I am grateful and glad to return the favor.