I am in the third grade, and I am wandering the aisles of my elementary school library. I select a thick book about the Wright brothers, fascinated with the account of the invention of flight. I am about to head to the checkout desk when the librarian approaches me and gently admonishes me for perusing books in the sixth-grade aisle. It occurs to me that it is silly to limit students to certain sections, but before I can protest, my teacher, Mrs. Conway, comes to my aid. She tells the librarian that I should be allowed access to the entire library and assures her that I can read at the sixth-grade level.
I came from a bookish family; the shelves in our house were full of books. Though I did not have a natural proclivity in math or science, I loved reading. My earliest childhood storybooks were Little Golden Books. My mother read Poky Little Puppy, Tootle, Tawny Scrawny Lion, and the Saggy Baggy Elephant to me endlessly. I could listen to the rhythm and rhymes of Dr. Seuss creations repeatedly. But nothing delighted me like Grandpa Bunny, a story about a wise and beloved elderly rabbit who disappears one day but leaves behind a beatific sunset. Even at a tender age, I knew that he had died.
My father would read to me, as well, but his reading selections were more to his liking than mine. I remember sitting on his lap in our living room in a mid-Century modern black wool armchair. He was still in his work clothes, having scooped me up as soon as he came in the door. I listened, mesmerized, as he read Walden by Henry D. Thoreau, the sound of his voice captivating me. I pretended to understand the philosophical concepts, but in truth, I just wanted to sit with him for as long as he would let me.
As a special treat, my parents would allow me and my siblings to read at the dinner table, an event that thrilled me more than my favorite dessert. I was not allowed to read during Saturday morning chores, however. When I was supposed to be cleaning my room, I would crawl into bed surreptitiously and read. My mother would call out from upstairs and ask if I had changed my bed sheets and picked up the clothes off the floor. I would reply that I was almost done, to which her frequent response was, “That’s not true, I can tell from your voice that you are horizontal.” I always wondered if she really knew, or whether she just suspected that I was derelict.
As an emerging reader, I adored Beverly Cleary’s writings and those of Roald Dahl. When I became more proficient, I read the creations of E.B. White and Gerald Durrell. I was riveted by fanciful stories about children facing misfortune or injustice – and solving problems with pluck and determination. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Charlotte’s Web, a Wrinkle in Time, and The Pink Motel enraptured me. My allegiance to them has endured; I still have them.
In middle school, reading was a diversion from the monotony of the classroom. I was an uninspired and diffident student, and grief from recent family tragedies supplanted any connection to learning. I would sneak into the library as soon as I got to school and check out a horse book, my favorite genre. I would read all day long, whenever I could get away with it. I sometimes propped up a textbook on my desk and tucked a Marguerite Henry or Walter Farley selection inside it. So long as the teacher sat at her desk at the front of the class, she had no idea. A couple of times I completed an entire 200-page tome during a single day, and I triumphantly dropped it off at the library before catching the school bus home.
I love slipping from the grasp of reality into the embrace of the fantastic. Now, if I could just figure out how to read while pretending to edit a legal brief, my life would be perfect.