My love of reading definitely started in first grade when Jane, Dick and Sally came into my life as letters arranged on a page and Spot and Puff chased each other into a story. As I read through my years Nancy Drew solved one mystery after another as library books became my friends. The one book I particularly remember as influential was Lad, a dog by Albert Payton Ternhue. It was the story of a collie told through his eyes. I still remember him laying under the grand piano. I loved animals and this story brought joy. Books came in and out of my life rapidly as I devoured the stories and expanded my world. In junior high my most embarrassing moment came when my math teacher caught me reading at my desk instead of paying attention to the chalkboard.
Throughout my life a trip to a library has been a reward to me as I load up on all sorts of books. I have never been much of a book buyer. Going through books at a rapid pace I never felt the need to collect them. I own some of course but I'm not a person with a large library. It wouldn't be my house without books stacked all over and book bags sagging with the weight of books just waiting to be read. Did you have a favorite?
What books influenced you?
I thoroughly enjoyed this post, Peggy. I, too, enjoyed Dick, Jane, Sally, Puff, and Spot in first grade and the other books you shared. I read vociferously growing up. So thanks for the trip down Memory Lane.
ReplyDeleteI have no memory of learning to read. By the beginning of first grade, I was already reading the sets of encyclopedias in our home. I devoured our encyclopedia set called Lands and People in first grade, followed by the travel books of Richard Halliburton in the next few years. It's funny, but I experienced no dissonance between what I was reading in school and at home. Certainly these books fueled my desire to travel.
My mother read to me from the beginning, and I remember with fondness "Bambi" and Kipling's "Just So Stories," also "Little Black Sambo" (which is considered politically incorrect now). I was always fascinated about the thought of fierce tigers chasing each other around a tree and turning into ghee. I didn't question whether or not this could really happen, because I had a huge imagination and accepted it all. And of course Sambo was so clever in tricking the tigers.
The earliest book I remember reading on my own must have been some sort of Golden Book, and I've searched and searched for it in old book stores. I was four when I got it. I don't remember the title, but it had a Greek, a Scot, and a Japanese, each in their national dress, and it showed them in their homes and countries. I was particularly fascinated by the Japanese who lived in a paper house because of the frequent earthquakes. I'm not sure if it was in that book, but somewhere at that time I saw a picture of a cow's tail sticking out of a closed earthquake crack. I know that's when my passion for geology started! That, and what my brother and I called "Dinosaur Rock" in Nova Scotia.
Like Jorge Luis Borges, I have always imagined heaven as a place with an infinite library and lots of time to read!
Have a good one, my friend!