Sun, May 15
... Go on like I never knew you
Life is a series of firsts and lasts. First words, first steps, last night in a crib, last bottle, and so it goes, from there all the way from first breath to last breath.
I just finished reading The Child That Books Built, a book about the shaping and defining influences that children's literature can be--and was, in so many cases, in my life (PS, Linds, I think you'd love this book), and I realized that one of the most important "firsts" is the first chapter book.
It, I think, ranks up there with first day of school, first kiss, and first car in the most important days. Almost everyone I know remembers the first chapter book they read; where and when and how old they were, and somehow, that first book transports them into some higher plane of story and imagination.
It's the first time that a story expands, on some level, into the exciting world of subplots and character development, beyond a single story arc, beyond the illustrations that lay out the visuals in a concrete reality.
It's that rite of passage that opens up a new world in the same way that a driver's license will ten years later.
Mine was Little House in the Big Woods, when I was 5. Kindergarten, or thereabouts. We were driving one summer--it was a family vacation to a reunion in Colorado--and I took it in the car with me, the first indication that I would be able to read in moving vehicles without getting carsick (for the most part). I have a few vivid memories, one of which is, ironically, getting carsick (but only once), and throwing up on the side of the road, wearing pyjamas.
I remember that those books opened a whole new world of possibilities, though. The Little House books were my first foray into the world outside of the storybooks that had been my literary staples up to that point, and once I was gone, I never looked back. I graduated to Nancy Drew within a year, and devoured everything I could get my hands on, always getting special permission to sign out books from the "older" section of the school library.
I am, in so many ways, a child that books built. They were such a part of my development and growth as a child that I can't extract what I learned from experience from what I learned through reading. It all complemented each other, and who I am is one and the same from all the pieces, not just little bits.
One in a long line of firsts. One of many.....
infinite || abyss
posted at 10:46 p.m.
