Did someone read to you when you were a child? If so, I’m sure you now realize that is one of the more important gifts one human can give to another. My mother read to me every night at bedtime. She had a treasured collection of children’s books that her mother bought for her and more that had seen better days from my Great-grandmother. This was during the depression so no new ones were purchased. But we had the Grimms and Aesop, Anderson, R.L. Stevenson and of course Lewis Carroll, just to name a few. All the fables and fairytales and legends that sends a child’s imagination soaring. Who could ask for a more fascinating tale than the one about the Taylor who killed seven with one blow? I won’t say more about that, lest I give away the ending. And poems that stayed with me forever, "The House that Jack Built" for one, comes to mind, and I can still recite the whole thing. When I was in the third grade I attended a one room public school. After saying the Pledge and the Lord’s Prayer, and the Bible reading was over each morning, our teacher would read a few pages from “The Secret Garden” and I still remember my silent plea for just a couple more pages, please, please!
Books were hard to come by back then. I read everything I could get my hands on. When there was nothing else, I read the Bible, read it from cover to cover several times over, during my teen years, which may explain why I am no longer a very religious person, but a whiz at Jeopardy. In the fifth grade I began to collect Big Little Books. I know that sounds like an oxymoron to you junior citizens but Big Little Books were the predecessor of comic books. They were 3 and ½ by 4 and ½ inches, width and height, and 1 and ½” thick, containing from 200 to 300 pages. They displayed a full page of black-and-white cartoon or engraving, followed by a page of text. A lot of them were biased on comic strips of the thirties but there were also classics mixed in the lot. My first reading of “A Tale of Two Cities” was a Big Little Book. Some were related to radio programs like Jack Armstrong and Don Winslow, and, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? – Why the Shadow, of course! I could not afford new ones, they cost a dime, but there was a brisk trade among children and I occasionally had a penny or two so could buy one second hand. The choice between a Big Little Book and huge bag of candy was a tough one. By the time I left home for the Army I had over 60 of them. They were burnt a few years later when my family moved to a new place. I see on Ebay, some sell now for as much as a thousand dollars. {Sigh!}
I think the only present I received for my 10th birthday was a book from an Aunt, “A History of Rome.” The book was written for adolescents. I realized after reading it that we had not come very far in 2000 years. At least my family hadn’t. The Romans had better baths and privys than we did. We bathed in a galvanized wash tub once a week. We had them beat so far as light was concerned though, we had kerosene lamps. This book got me interested in history and I’ve been a subject buff ever since.
For my 11th birthday the same Aunt gave me a secondhand copy of “The Sea Wolf” by Jack London. It was the first book that really grabbed me. I must have read it 7 or 8 times that year. The intellectual battle between Wolf Larson and Humphrey Van Weyden convinced me that getting the best education I possibly could was imperative. I found the romantic thread in the book, silly, but hey, I was 11. What do you expect?
When I was 17 I read Philip Wylie’s “Generation of Vipers” and came to the conclusion that I now knew everything in the world that was worth knowing. My intellect has been on a steady decline since that point in time.
P.S. If you have young children, please read to them!
How I love to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue.
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--