C.S. Lewis once said, “One day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again”. I must be getting older because I am reading fairy tales for the second time in my life. Both of my daughters, Madeleine, age 9, and Georgia, age 6, will still sit and listen to me read anything about princesses and mermaids. I want my girls to love to read and enjoy using their imaginations to picture what the words on the pages mean to them. I want them to see me reading for pleasure and hopefully that will influence them to become voracious readers themselves. Sometimes in life we don’t get what we want.
My mother is an avid reader. As a little girl I would get such pleasure from sitting beside my mom while she read. I loved the even rhythm of her breathing and the musty smell of the pages of her paperback novels. To her, reading meant relaxing and escaping from the reality of my sisters, my dad and me. Because of the calming effects my mother’s reading, I began reading at a very young age. I wanted to be just like her. I was reading Dr. Seuss and Little Golden Books by the age of 4. I had a limited library of my own but my mother took me often to the library so I could explore the shelves and choose my own escapes.
For my eighth birthday, my Aunt gave me the Nancy Drew mystery, “The Secret of Red Gate Farm”. I was so excited to be given a real novel and I could hardly wait for my party to conclude so I could start reading. I was shocked when my mother said that Nancy Drew books were too old for me and that she would keep it aside for me for a few more years. I was devastated. Now that I’m a mother I understand that what my mother, meant was that she felt the content of the novel was too advanced for me at the time. What my eight year old self heard was, “You are too young to be able to read this book.” I took my mother’s words as a challenge. I surreptitiously read “The Secret of Red Gate Farm” and then admitted it to my mother and begged for more Nancy Drew books. I couldn’t get enough and read almost all 63 books in the original series. This began my love of reading novels. I discovered a love of losing myself in the stories and the characters of an enthralling novel. I would rather read a book than watch TV. I suppose reading made me feel adult and more like my mother.
After reading all of the Nancy Drew books, I discovered Judy Blume, Louisa May Alcott, C.S. Lewis, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I would devour any book that got in my way. As I grew into my teen years, I read popular novels of the time by V.C. Andrews. Although trashy, they were entertaining and were considered the ‘cool’ books to read at the time. My friends and I would talk about the books and giggle about the inappropriate relationship between the brother and sister. I didn’t know it at the time but those confabulations were my first book clubs.
My all time favourite book from my childhood is “The Trumpet of the Swan” and I have forced it on my kids twice now. My grade two teacher, Miss Steibel, read it to my class and I fell in love with Louis the swan with each turn of the page. I imagined I could hear the trumpeting “koh-ho” of Louis’s parents trying desperately to get their young cygnet to speak. This book was magic to me and I wanted so much for my own children to love it as I do. They humour me and listen quietly while I read it to them but they don’t ever want to discuss Sam or Louis and their unique relationship. They must think I’m a little crazy when I try to mimic the koh-ho sounds in a vain attempt to excite them and get them to love the book as well.
When I found out I was going to be a mom, I had many hopes and dreams for my kids. One of those dreams was that they would share my love of books. I imagined the family all sitting quietly on the couch reading and just enjoying the silence while our minds were busily putting the stories in our hands into mini-movies on our internal movie screens. This has not happened yet. Georgia does enjoy books and is working very hard at reading but she hasn't felt that connection to a story yet, the way I did as a young child. For Madeleine, reading is a chore. It does not come easily to her and I can’t help but blame myself for her lack of enjoyment from reading. I will always wonder if I didn’t read to her often enough or if I could have offered her more help when she was learning to read. I suppose I assumed that she would be just like me and fall in love with the extraordinary world of books. I must admit that Madeleine’s lack of enthusiasm for reading is a source of frustration for me, but I do understand that each child is different. My hope for her now is that she will discover something, a hobby, perhaps, that will provide her with an enduring comfort the way books do for me.
It would be more than fair to say that books have shaped me into the person I am today. The characters that I fell in love with live in my heart and I call upon them when I need to borrow some words and let the strong women characters speak for me. More than once I have wished that I could live with Laura, Mary, Ma and Pa on the prairie and live a simple life or be a feisty dreamer like Anne Shirley. I wish I could go back to the time of innocence in my life when I didn't understand what was going on in “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”. It should come as no surprise to learn that my nickname for my daughter Georgia is George, just like Nancy Drew’s best friend. I still hold out hope that my girls will become involved with the characters they discover in their own experiences with reading. When I become a teacher and am reading fairy tales for the third time around, I hope I can inspire my students to love to hold, smell and read books and jump into the pages of a book with both feet.
