Books are Me: A Bibliophile's Memoir and Commentary

by Katherine L. Harris Szerdy

-----------------October 17, 2008 MY BLOG ENTRY
On this cloudy, windy, dramatic fall weather afternoon, I am enjoying sitting here in my lovely home in my beautiful hometown, Hudson, Ohio, in my fave reading/writing/knitting chair (my greatest garage sale find of the year!) enjoying the gorgeous autumn scenes outside each of the five windows surrounding me while listening to classical music, sipping spice tea, writing in my online journal. The puppy is bathed, the laundry is somewhat done, I have nowhere to go for a change and life is good! We may even see a bit of snow this evening. Watching the yellow leaves drop from the trees each time I look up, I remember the children's books, Freddy, the Leaf, and The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. Always pay attention to trees in stories and poetry.  They are the silent sentinels, the wayshowers of our paths...in literature and in the forest of life

-----------------Funny—my childhood has yet to end. Nearly five and a half decades into this game called “Life” and I’m still collecting children’s books. ;-) My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Kosinski, was right—you’re never too old for a picture book.  The day I fall out of love with children’s literature is the day they put me six-feet-under.

It all started when my first babysitter, my Aunt Betty, a young, pretty twenty-something teacher, set me on her lap to entertain me with picture books, bringing to life with her animated inflections the characters of Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf, Hansel and Gretl and the wicked stepmother-turned-witch, Peter Pan and Captain Hook. Like every preschooler, I listened intently, sailing away into puffy marshmallow clouds with Peter and Wendy or anxiously waiting for Sleeping Beauty to awaken after the kiss from the handsome prince, always relieved to hear when good triumphed over evil in the end. 

Bruno Bettelheim wrote in his book, The Uses of Enchantment, that fairy tale endings provide a necessary spiritual comfort alleviating fears--imagined or real--which accompany childhood.  Growing up in a home plagued with verbal and physical violence, I embraced children’s stories as they provided for me a lifeline of hope that justice would be served and that things would turn out all right in the end.  Throughout my childhood, however, I discovered that it was not only fairy tales which helped me to maintain my composure throughout the chaos, but stories from many genres--picture books to chapter books, historical fiction to fantasy/sci fi, books which give us hope and keep our gaze looking up to a brighter future.

Long before Sesame Street and even Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, children’s television show hero Captain Kangaroo introduced little preschool me to such wonderful picture books as Make Way for Ducklings, Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, Little Toot, The Little House, The Red Shoes, Curious George, Caps for Sale, and Make Way for Ducklings. The stories were read by a warm, friendly, grandfatherly narrator while the camera panned the book’s illustrations, making it seem like an animation, and I was forever hooked--no, addicted, a lifelong love affair with books.

I was born too early for Shel Silverstein or Jack Prelutsky to tickle my middle with silly, clever couplets and limericks, but Dr. Seuss helped me listen right along with Horton Hears a Who and try to make my own Green Eggs and Ham with The Cat in the Hat in his lilting, lyrical voice.

 Even before learning how to read, Daddy took me to the library to get my first library card. I stood proud, nose barely above the counter, as I slid my first four selections across the checkout desk, handing over the official-looking manila-colored card with a metal ID number embossed into the corner to the librarian as she rhythmically slipped the due-date card out of the book pocket, punched each with the due date, and slid it back in. I loved the sound of the crinkle of the jacket as she opened and closed each book. Later my little sister would join Daddy and me on these weekly trips to the library at which time I filled my arms with titles which the Captain brought to my attention—as many as my small arms could carry. Those trips were always happy times followed by a stop at the local ice cream shop for a nickel vanilla cone.

I begged for my books when I had to go to Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital for a month for an operation on my kidney. Young patients were not permitted to have personal possessions, but every few days, a hospital volunteer wearing a striped apron came around with a shopping cart full of well-thumbed picture books to keep our minds off their loneliness, homesickness, and pain.

Soon after learning to read such delicious literary treats as Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Pippi Longstocking, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and The Black Stallion, observers perceived my rapt interest as a bit excessive.

     “You’ll hurt your eyes.”
          “You’re going to need glasses.”
               “You’ll go blind if you read too much.”
                    “Put that book down and go outside and play!”
I giggled under my covers, flashlight shining on the penguin antics of Mr. Popper’s pets and gleaned a cache of ideas from Pippi for making my own mischief. And to this day, I still make reference to “The Radish Cure” whenever I see a dirty floor or filthy nephew with soot thick enough—1/16” to be exact--to plant radish seeds, and watch them grow!  Oh the unforgettable lessons Mrs. Piggle Wiggle teaches children as they visit her upside down house always smelling of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. 

For someone whose mother was too wrapped up in her addictions to give her children the gift of her time, these books helped me develop a sense of right and wrong.  I remember seven-year-old me reading two-thirds of the first book in The Black Stallion series, shedding the first literature-induced tear in the back seat of our old 1956 Ford while my folks were shopping back in the day when parents didn’t get arrested for leaving their kids in the car and car locks were only used in big cities.

Whether in the backseat or under the covers, I lost count of all the titles I read and reread of the tales of Henry and Ribsy, Beezus and Ramona. Beverly Cleary, one of the greatest children’s authors of all time—had the rare ability to adapt to sociological changes in our society. Three decades later, I entertained my elementary students with Newbery Medal Winner Dear Mr. Henshaw, the story of fourth grader Leigh Botts who writes a series of letters to his favorite author. The author, like his father, disappoints the boy’s need for relationship as his parents go through a divorce; but through the act of writing the letters, the boy makes sense of the turmoil around him and finds healing. Even as the teacher, I found this book particularly poignant and therapeutic as my parents were going through their divorce.

Once a month in elementary school, our teacher would hand out flyers for Weekly Reader books, giving us an opportunity to place an order for a delicious paperback read or two. Back in the early 1960s, most books cost only a quarter or 35c, a price which most of the children in my class could afford; but with my mother squandering my Dad’s earnings on her own wants, leaving us deprived of food and clothes of our own, I was rarely able to place an order. I dreaded the days when the orders came in. During recess, teacher placed the books on the desks of those who paid. I always felt so alone walking back to my seat, classmates all around excitedly checking out their stacks of colorful new titles hot off the press.

Growing up in the generation before Judy Blume’s coming of age stories taught girls how to have the courage to be authentic, I felt less alone reading about such strong female protagonists as Birdie in Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski, who taught me about life growing up in rugged, backwoods Florida while trying to achieve her dreams of becoming a musician. I had so desperately wanted to learn how to play the piano in a home where the dance of our family system revolved around the demands of my mother.  Caddie Woodlawn, a big-hearted tomboy, much to the dismay of her city-bred mother, inspired me with her courage, and Meg, a highly intelligent misfit, in A Wrinkle in Time, succeeded in expanding my imagination by taking me along for the ride to out-of-this world places. While my parents’ relationship grew distant, Dad working hours of overtime at his day job before reporting to his part-time evening job and my mother withdrew further into the world of her own addictions, rarely coming out of her bedroom, leaving my sister and I, and now our baby brother, to tend to ourselves-- I felt less alone with the strong heroines of these Newbery Medal winners as role models. Entering their worlds took my mind off my own.

I read all of the original Laura Ingalls Wilder series three or four times throughout my elementary school years and have had the pleasure of revisiting them twice with my daughter. I became so absorbed in the stories and grew so close to the characters that each re-read was like going back to visit old, familiar friends. No matter how marketers try to bastardize these gems, I mean make feeble attempts to create fictional spinoffs for their own greedy intentions, Laura’s stories continue to stand on their own merit as literary masterpieces. Pop culture has also given Nancy Drew a makeover, leaving her and her adventures barely recognizable to the innocence of a previous generation.

In sixth grade, the school nurse called home. “Your daughter, Kathy, failed her eye exam this year, Mrs. Harris. You will need to take her to an eye doctor to be fitted with eyeglasses.” Dad made sure that I got fitted and six weeks later, my first pair of eyeglasses came in. Suddenly I realized that I had been missing out on the finer details of my surroundings, i.e. blades of grass and leaves on the trees. As the world around me came into focus, so did my understanding of the importance of literature in a young girl’s life, and I resolved to seek a career that involved sharing my love of books with the next generation.

As a former high school English teacher, I am seriously disturbed by the trend over the past couple of decades toward dark literature about suicide, violence, homosexuality, divorce, unwed parenthood, cutting. What happened to strong role models embodying positive values, heroes who proactively rise above their circumstances to seek resolution. Little comfort can be derived from the proliferation of titles existing today in which superficiality flatlines character values, self-indulgence breeds entitlement, and morality is treated as anachronistic and old-fashioned.

Certainly preteens and adolescents today are a more sophisticated audience who sniff out books where the troubled teen who never quite finds her way out of the corner she has backed herself into is the feature character? This generation, weaned onto daily mega-doses of reality tv and a simpler syntax, craves fast-paced, down and dirty characters involved in complex issues, demanding raw honesty often at the expense of the best interest of themselves and others.

In an age when so many students come to our classrooms carrying labels heavy on their bacvks--Obstinate Defiant Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, Emotionally Handicapped, and clinically depressed, heavy on their backs, stories involving cynical savagery cast the gaze of the reader further within himself rather than up and out to the possibility of a brighter future.
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