Dear Childhood Books,
My emotions for you run deep and long and overflowing. We have spent so much time together in the past twelve years of my life. You have been with me since the first spouting of knowledge invaded my mind. It is hard to forget our shared experiences in the secret shadows of quiet places and in the isolation under my covers in the still of night.
Those were the times of pure innocence and wonder in which you broke the hardened seed of my mind and allowed me to grow with the warming glow of your sunshine. For many years, you fed me and hydrated me with your words and pictures, twisting and transforming me until I sprouted with life and vitality. I still get giddy with nostalgia when breaking open your cracked binding and gazing at your yellow pages and reveling in your stories. You have done so much for me, but I continue to grow. My mind searches out for the fix it's rewarded after delving into intricate plots and revealing elements. It pains me but the facts must be faced.
I read Amelia Bedelia and you are nice.
I read Junie B. Jones and you are funny.
I read Charlotte's Web and you are sweet.
No longer can I settle for nice and funny and sweet. No longer can I take a trip to the shelf, find you, and get my simple satisfaction. Your empty plot lines and elementary structure used to leave me in contented bliss, but now I long for more adventure. More hidden meaning behind the perplexing mysteries that are words and sentence structure and poetry and themes about life and love and death and sadness and history. I long for those books that leave your heart out on the table, open and raw for the onslaught of words put together on a page.
I swear when I entered middle school that I didn't mean to find this new love and I didn't, it found me. I would walk past the library and they would tease me and taunt me, calling out my name like a sweet caress. My first time was with John Steinbeck who taught me the ways of human existence and friendship and living the American dream. Then came Edgar Allen Poe and soon after, the one who stole my heart: William Shakespeare. I found myself cast under the spell of their lyrical phrases. They surrounded me and helped me grow and understand life, the universe, and everything. Going to libraries became a new experience. There were new genres unheard of to me like young adult, fantasy, historical fiction, romance, and classic literature. Every meeting was something new and exciting and I discovered that certain books had the power to make me laugh, contemplate, and even weep. Emotions and experiences came alive to me like never before. Words soon emulated movement and were loaded with hidden meanings. Once I started, I couldn't stop.
What I have done is not something I regret and this blatant betrayal was the only way to free myself from the darkened cage you trapped me in, and it has become a way into the morning light of day where I can continue to grow and be nurtured by great men and women like Walt Whitman and Jane Austin. Parting is indeed such sweet sorrow and while I head into this new life, you will continue to have a place in my heart and on my shelf.
Isabella
This topic really made me think! The thought of no longer reading those books from my childhood is like loosing a childhood best friend. Granted that every once in awhile when I'm feeling sick or I have a bad case of the blues, I will pull out and old Goosebumps book and relish in the memories of a time when I had no worries and life was simple. As children, we are naive, when the word scary comes to mind we think of monsters under our beds and creatures in our closets. As young adults we come to the brutal realization that the world is a scary place, but the things we thought we could always count on as children are now the things we should be frightened of. Our bedrooms suddenly become safe, other people become dangerous, and the world outside is harsh. I wonder why our views change so much in the years of adolescence. The change in literature could be pushing us into reality and helping us grow up. I'm curious, might this have anything to do with the reading assignments we are given in middle school/ high school?
ReplyDeleteThis was the first blog post from your class that I read and I really enjoyed it! I used to read all those same books. Although now I'm not much of a reader, I can still relate to this post. I've put down the children's books and moved on to different things. For you it may have been moving onto different and more complex writers, but for me it was moving onto writing myself. Like Robin said above, as we got older we started to realize that the monsters are under our beds and in our closets anymore. The monsters are sometimes other people. I read another post from your class that was dealing with moving on from childhood and it does make me wonder why we change so much. It's almost like we aren't really the same person anymore. Robin posed a good question above about reading assignments in high school playing a part in our change.
ReplyDeleteI think children books will always be fond memories to those who read them as children. I used to love Dr. Zeus books and can still quote some of the books. The same is true for old Disney movies for me. I love watching Hercules and Mulan to this day sometimes. It might be the end of a deeper relationship, but the spark will always be there.
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