Readers Uncovered

February 10, 2012

Readers Uncovered features readers and their answers to tough reading questions.

WHAT IS THE BOOK YOU REMEMBER MOST FONDLY FROM CHILDHOOD, AND WHY?

I could cite Jane Eyre—which I filched from my mother’s nightstand and have loved ever since—or the $1 copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray that I bought on a whim. These two, read first at 9, have had lasting effects on my reading life.

But it was the memory of reading of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic that I have to draw upon. It was the summer that I moved in with my parents and brothers [most of my life before then, I lived with my grandparents]. I was 9, too. I plucked it from my mother’s shelves, and at one point my father remarked, “Isn’t that too adult for her?” But my mother let me read it.

It was wonderful. The magical and the mundane, the otherworldly in suburbia. Witches! And soccer moms! It wasn’t cutesy, never twee. There was this pervading sense of serene sorrow within the narrative, the characters. It was good fiction. And I knew, looking back, that it helped me grow up: A third into the novel, there’s this scene where one of the witch-sisters makes love with her guidance counselor boyfriend. It was pretty tame, just a few lines, then cutting to black. But, you know, I felt this sense of betrayal descending upon me when I read that. My mother had read this book, so she knew about these things. My father didn’t want me to read this book, so he must have known something was up. A lot of other people all over the world had read this book. These people knew things no one had ever hinted at to me!

It was like, This was what the world has been keeping secret from me. Oh, man.

I’ve read Practical Magic twice more after that first read—most recently a year ago—and, thankfully, it’s still beautiful, sentimental value or otherwise.

-Sasha from Sasha and the Silverfish

I have fond memories of reading books in my childhood, so I can’t choose just one book I remember fondly. My mother read chapter books to me and my brother and sister, from Roald Dahl to E.B. White. I remember she read me The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett when I was sick once. She also read us the Chronicles of Narnia, and I loved those books. My personal reading went through phases: I’d read everything I could find by an author. For example, I read all the Happy Hollisters stories, all the books by the author Avi, and all the Babysitter’s Club books and other books by Ann M. Martin. I also loved the Anne of Green Gables series. Books and reading were always a central part of my life, and I loved riding my bike to the library to get new books to read. I think the fact that my mother encouraged reading and read to me helped me see it was a worthwhile and fun hobby.

-Rebecca from Rebecca Reads

The book I remember most fondly from childhood is undoubtedly, JUST WILLIAM by Richmal Crompton. This collection of 12(?) short stories, about a mischievous but likeable eleven-year-old, was given to me one day by an aunt and uncle, and it became a constant friend and companion to me in the mid-seventies, when I spent many of my summers living with my grandparents in the rural setting of Cornwall, England.

Written in the 1920s, the stories contained within JUST WILLIAM gave me a lot of the inspiration for my own childhood adventures, and I was glad to have it at my side. Being an only child spending summer holidays in a village that was bereft of other children, JUST WILLIAM was always there to fill up my imagination ‘tank’. By day I would wile away countless hours running through the fields with my imaginary gang of Outlaws, searching the hedgerows for my damnedest of enemies, Hubert Lane. And by night I would snuggle up in bed, with my straining against the failing light, reread another story, planning my adventures for the next day.

-Rob from RobAroundBooks