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| The library in Altavista. Our county has four branches. |
Does that title seem like an
exaggeration? Over the top? Maybe.
Books didn’t literally save my
life. A pile of books didn’t literally keep me from dying.
But they helped me survive
mentally. I got through a lot of trying times because of books, especially when
I was a child.
Books made me feel secure. I read
some books over and over, so they were familiar to me.
I suppose they were an escape,
too, from tension that was sometimes in the house, from anxiety and fear.
The real thing books did for me
was to show me the world. I learned that other people lived different lives
from me. I learned how other people treated each other. I was inspired to live
a different life.
I visited the county library quite
often, along with the school library.
I loved walking up and down the
aisles of the county library. For a while, I stuck to the area holding the
juvenile books, but gradually I started looking at the books in the other
sections.
The librarian, Mrs. Guthrie,
seemed to be able to identify every book in the place. She knew where every
book was and whether or not I might like it.
Here were some of my favorites:
*Trixie Belden books
*The Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart
Lovelace
*A Gift of Magic by Lois Duncan
*Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp
*Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
*Rosamond du Jardin books
featuring the characters Pam and Penny Howard and Tobey Haydon
*Encyclopedia Brown books
*Books featuring the Tuckers
(Tina, Terry, Merry, Penny, and Tom) by Jo Mendel
*Nancy Drew books
*Robin Kane books
*A biography of Amelia Earhart
that I read over and over
*Sherlock Holmes stories
I had such a good time working
back through my memories, remembering the books I read as a young person. Now I
want to read them again.
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| Chase Bird seems to like reading, too. We're now reading "Personal," by Lee Child. |
What books did you read as a
child? And if you have children, what are they reading?
