I wasn’t much of a reader up until I was eight years old. I read what I had to for school; I always made the quotas and got the stars, but it wasn’t something I made a point of doing. (I even remember getting caught for faking my time. I reported that one day I’d read six hours. I was only six years old, so logic hadn’t taken hold yet in my head. Busted immediately.)

I read the books I had to for school, and I read out loud to my parents from the readers. We had a lot of Little Golden Books at home, some nursery rhyme books, and other kids’ readers, but I was getting too old for them. I didn’t mind, because I didn’t really like to read anyway.

Each week my fourth-grade class went to the library and had to check out a book. And each week, I got either Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing or Superfudge. (I was a little girl in Roy, Utah, and these books took place in New York City, a far-off place I’d never imagined…where I’ve now lived for 15 years. Coincidence?) Occasionally I broke into a Beverly Cleary mode, but as soon as I’d read that particular Ramona book I’d head right back to Peter and Fudge. Can you say, “Rut”?

Yeah, Fudge swallows Dribble and goes to the hospital, and when he emerges Dribble is no more so Peter gets a dog. The family moves to New Jersey and sublets their Central Park West apartment (this location means they are rich, which was lost on me as a nine-year-old) and Fudge goes to kindergarten. They love the suburbs but decide to go back to New York because Tootsie can now say “yuck.” Yeah, yeah. Fine. (I reread Superfudge a year ago and it was almost all the same…except that instead of asking for a clock radio for Christmas, Peter asks for an MP3 player. Betrayal.)

Over and over, I read these stories. Each week I traded one book for the other, and Mrs. Miller, the librarian, didn’t catch on. Until the day that BOTH Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing AND Superfudge were…CHECKED OUT.

Aaaigh!

I had to get a book. We had reading time after lunch every day, and we had to read. But no Fudge books! Oh, no.

Our library time consisted of about twenty minutes running around finding books, ten minutes checking them out, and then twenty more minutes watching a “video” (kind of like a slide show, though not shown on a slide projector…I have no idea what this quaint little machine was) and then ten minutes answering questions from Mrs. Miller to get Jolly Ranchers. That day I wandered during the wandering time; I wandered during the checkout time; I wandered during the video. I even looked under “C” to see if any Beverly Cleary books, my failsafe, were there. They were not. At this point Mrs. Miller was annoyed and told me I needed to get a book right now. Drat. I’d looked everywhere and found nothing.

A book cover caught my eye. It was a scene from the Revolutionary War, with a civilian and a Redcoat soldier fighting. Well, maybe that’s exciting enough. I listlessly picked it up off the shelf and checked it out.

Oh, my goodness.

Several things hit me as I read this new book. (Its title, unfortunately, escapes me.) One, it was exciting to read a new book. I didn’t know what was going to happen! Two, it was a lot of fun to take a new book to bed and read it under the covers. Three, if this new book was so exciting and great—and I’d taken a chance with that, after all—wouldn’t other books also possibly be exciting and great? What else lay in store for me?

Later that year, I started reading Nancy Drew. I liked them enough that I started reading every night. Then I started taking the books around with me, and I read in breaks at school. I read during class, and got caught numerous times. I read at church and in the car. I couldn’t stop! I read the Nancy Drew series almost in order; I started with book 17, because that had the coolest picture on the front (I don’t remember its title, but it had fireworks and a very colorful dragon on the cover) and then tried to start from number one, The Secret of the Old Clock. From Nancy Drew I moved to Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House on the Prairie, though I never got into the TV series. Then The Great Brain. Pretty soon, I was frequently getting into trouble at school for not paying attention in class. But while most kids got in trouble because they were talking, I was reading. My parents didn’t know how to discipline that, and the teachers didn’t either. But they didn’t really want to.

One book about a Revolutionary War soldier had changed my entire outlook on reading. And for that…I have to thank the kids who swiped my Judy Blume books out from under me.

(a special thank you to TLC Book Tours for inviting us to host Kathryn and her book Did I Expect Angels? It’s been a special time)

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 1:01 am

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