My mom tells me that we read together all the time when I was little. And I do have a visceral nostalgia for the shoestring spaghetti of Gregory the Terrible Eater, the pendulous night fruit discovered by Stellaluna, the nine-pie picnic courtesy of Harold and his crayon (sensing a pattern yet?). I don't, however, have any memories of snuggling next to her, feeling the characters and pages with grubby little fingers, or sounding out simple words like CAT DOG BOOK. I just remember the stories. It wasn't until much later that any real connection was made between those stories and the act of reading itself.
This is my first memory of reading. The freedom of choice! The prestige of the higher level (literally) stacked crate! The illicit thrill of leaving our little school desk prisons! For the first time, reading was an experience almost as satisfying as the story.
Though I've long forgotten the plot of Dragonling and I've certainly outgrown the humor of Space Brat 3: the Wrath of Squat, I'll never quite forget the flimsy, unremarkable paperback doors that lead me into the world of reading.
I was always destined to be the reader out of my siblings (or doomed--I did get grounded from reading in high school because I would read all night instead of doing my homework...). I was the one who, after my mom finished a bedtime story, would bounce up and down saying "Again! Again!" Some of the family favorites were The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series. I also loved Shel Silverstein and the Hardy Boys. All pretty standard fair for a kid, except maybe the Stinky Cheese book, though I have since found other people who grew up loving it too.

Just in case anyone magically has read this book and knows what it is, I'm going to list everything I remember about it. It's a silly notion, but I have to hope against hope that one day someone will relieve my brain of this nagging burden.
- The main character is female and is one of many slaves whose job it is to work in the mines. Slaves are branded with a mark on their foreheads, but she moved when receiving hers, so it is smudged.
- She escapes from the mines and hides the fact that she is a slave and ends up journeying with a (free) man, or perhaps two of them.
- There is a scene where she and her companions stop for the night in a cave, and she sleeps by the fire, naked, between animal furs, while near her male companion(s). That scene was so captivating to me at the time. It seemed taboo and sensual, yet liberating. I might have been reading waaay too much into it.
- Later in the book, she ends up in the religious center of their world. She goes into the temple with the continuously burning flame, which is only open to the high priest once a year.
And that's all I remember. I remember so little of a book that made such a huge impression on me. It is torment, I swear.

Diane:
It's hard to know where to start in this throwback post. My parents used to read to me and my sister before bed. We were promised one chapter each night, and I remember the two of us always begging for another because we lived in a "two-story" house. We were read adventure books primarily, children's condensed classics like Treasure Island, The Swiss Family Robinson, and Tom Sawyer. The series I remember the best is Frank Peretti's Cooper Kids Adventure series. I read on my own, of course, and often I would reread our story time books.

No comments:
Post a Comment