What you read as a child (whether read aloud to you or read to yourself) says a lot about who you are. There may not be obvious parallels in your chosen profession or personal qualities, but the stories we absorb in our earliest youth define the imaginative inner world against which we assess our experiences.
Reexamining those often unconscious influences can be fascinating. This is a topic I wrote about earlier this year for Bright Wings: Children’s Books.
With so much depending on our careful selection of books and attention to the formation of the moral imagination, should we not agonize over ever book that enters the home? Yes and no. I choose not to bring certain books into my home, but the list is quite small (and mostly involves drivel written in the past few decades). If you go back 50 to 100 years or more, there is generally an inherent sense of values that support the healthful growth and maturation of young minds.
How do you know what books used to be read? If you keep an eye out, there are recommendations everywhere. Once sampled, you may not like some, but if someone (in fiction or in real life) took the time to remember a title, there might be imaginative elements that, as Bright Wings aspires, “makes the heart soar.”
A few examples: In “Cheaper By the Dozen,” Mrs. Gilbreth loved reading “The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew” to her own growing children. Said children take the opportunity of her impassioned reading to plot against the in-house psychologist studying them.
Shirley Jackson mentions Carl Sandburg’s “Rootabaga Stories” among the books she selected for her children. While parts of the first volume are essentially unreadable, the second volume is sheer delight.
The biographies of several authors, including Else Holmelund Minarik of “Little Bear” renown, mention the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson as formative in their childhood education.
Just like storytellers lead you to other authors, illustrators will acquaint you with other fine picture-makers. Barbara McClintock, a self-taught illustrator of great success, began her career idolizing the work of the inimitable Maruice Sendak. Once again, paying attention to influences on an artist open up a world of possibly unexplored other books to dive into.
In some movies, characters have a thing or two to say about books. Nora Ephron, a wickedly funny woman, is responsible for more interest in Noel Streatfield’s “Ballet Shoes” than perhaps anyone else. Her spunky independent book shop owner character makes mention of Streatfield’s work in the silly rom-com “You’ve Got Mail,” and a perusal of the Good Reads page for the book suggests this instance led many people to discover the book for the first time.
On a side note, I much prefer the acrid realism of Ephron’s autobiographical “Heartburn” as opposed to the foolish fantasy of flicks like “You’ve Got Mail.” But, I suppose, that has nothing to do with finding children’s books.
What is it about character Kathleen Kelly’s passing comment about Streatfield that compels people to remember the book, look it up, and take the time to read it? Kelly spells the unusual name and articulates something of the unique qualities that make the work so interesting. In the end, that’s all there is to a book recommendation: delight in the unique qualities that endear a work to one person and may inspire such endearment in another reader.
Books are like friends: Once you’ve become acquainted with some, they naturally lead you to others. If you keep an eye out for recommendations of what to read next, they are everywhere.
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