My father was great storyteller in the Irish tradition. He had a small handful of stories about everyone in our family, stories that hardened like diamonds after decades of telling and retelling. He was a crafty one, my Dad. The stories that he polished with his voice were those that reflected the inner nature of each of us: the great-aunt who married her brother-in-law after her husband died, for she’d always loved the brother best, my grandfather’s dramatic encounter with the Catholic bishop who wouldn’t allow Great-Grandma to be buried by a priest, the uncle who like to eat beef fat topped with sugar and died a happy man.
Dad’s favorite story about me was my childhood habit of walking up to guests with my hands hidden behind my back. “Are you my friend?” I would ask. The guests invariably said that yes, of course they were my friend. I would then bring the forth the book I’d hidden behind my back. “Friends read me stories,” I’d explain.
Friends read me stories and stories became my friends.
Blueberries for Sal and Make Way for Ducklings were favorites back then, but I wasn’t choosy. Snuggling next to a new pal willing to read and turn the pages at the right time was all I needed.
Then came time for me to learn how to read myself. Books became the enemy.
It took me years longer than the other kids to figure how letters – ants on the page that refused to share their secrets with me – turned themselves into words, which then transformed into sentences and entire worlds of story. I have so much sympathy for kids who say that they hate books. It’s not the act of reading or writing that they hate. It’s the way that trying to read or write makes them feel. Not being able to read like others or make the ants line up in the right order makes one feel stupid. Unworthy. A failure. I teetered on the brink of disaster.
But I was one of the lucky ones. I went to a great school with patient teachers. (Thank you, public school teachers of Syracuse, NY!) By the end of third grade, they helped me train the ants to march to my tune and unlock the mystery of reading. Bread and Jam for Frances and Bedtime for Frances became my new best friends. They were followed by the wonderful adventures of Nancy Drew. She taught me how to be brave and resourceful and made me want a roadster even more than I wanted a horse. Heidi changed my life because it introduced me to the concept of other countries, cultures, and languages. I desperately wanted to eat cheese melted on bread the way she did. Microwaves hadn’t been invented yet so I used the toaster. Instead of creating a small, homey scene like in the book, I created a small fire and a lot of trouble.
Once I cracked the reading code, books became as important to me as food: everything by Beverly Cleary, especially. I also loved my Social Studies textbooks and gobbled them up like they were doughnuts.
My reading ventured into galaxies far, far away in middle school. Science fiction by Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, and the fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkien became my new best buddies. I wanted to love horror, too, but Dracula by Bram Stoker scared me so much that I hid it under the bed then spent the rest of the night in abject terror, convinced that Dracula would come to life through the pages and turn me into the undead.
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Some of My Best
Friends Are Books