Childhood and Adolescent Reading

I’ve been going through a book called The Pleasure of Reading: 43 Writers on the Discovery of Reading and the Books That Inspired Them edited by Antonia Fraser. I love these kinds of books because I’m always curious about what other people read.

This is a wonderful collection of lovely essays. I don’t think I have a lovely essay in me right now but let me offer brief thoughts on some of the books I read as a child and adolescent.

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew— Poor children are happy. Rich children are miserable. Rich children are made happier by getting to know poor children. My mother told me that I once came to her and asked if we were rich. She assured me that we were not. She swears I responded, “That’s good. Rich people are so lonely.”

Little House on the Prairie— I loved these books as a child but as an adult I couldn’t help noticing how paranoid Pa Ingalls was about the U.S. government. He also kept moving the family because there were just too many damn people around. No way was this guy Michael Landon.

“Little Boy Blue” by Eugene Field— When every line of more sophisticated poetry that I have committed to memory has left my brain I will still be able to recite this poem. I was a morbid child at times. I had a similar fascination with The Bird’s Christmas Carol. In this Kate Douglas Wiggins’ novel, a wealthy but sickly girl is befriended by poor children (see Five Little Peppers above, also by Kate Douglas Wiggins).

In case you don’t know the Eugene Field poem, here it is:

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
    But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
    And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
    And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
    Kissed them and put them there.

"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
    "And don't you make any noise!"
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
    He dreamt of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
    Awakened our Little Boy Blue—
Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
    But the little toy friends are true!

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
    Each in the same old place—
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
    The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
    In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
    Since he kissed them and put them there.

Saint Thomas’ Eve— This is a novel about Sir Thomas More. Alas, I became totally distracted by the references to More wearing a “hair shirt.” No adult could tell me what it was. Hillary Mantel has a somewhat different take on More than the one you’ll find here. She makes sure to remind you that he burned heretics at the stake.

Two books from my adolescent years stand out:

Look Homeward, Angel— I loved this book when I first read it. Eugene Gant wanted to know everything and so did I. Alas, I read it a few years ago and wondered what I ever saw in it. The great Maxwell Perkins was Thomas Wolfe’s editor but he didn’t cut enough.

Advise and Consent— I knew nothing about homosexuality when I read this book as a teenager. No one I knew talked of such things. So when I read that a senator was in trouble because someone had a picture of him “with a man,” I was pretty puzzled. I re-read it just a few years and the matter still seemed to me to be dealt with obliquely. However, I did still find it quite entertaining.

Stephanie Patterson

A Rose for Miss Bonnie

My mother has lived with us since her death in 2006.

My mother hated staying overnight in unfamiliar surroundings. She was happy to go anywhere you might want to take her as long as she could sleep in her own bed the same night. It made sense to me to keep her ashes among family.

Her urn is topped by a jaunty hat that she loved wearing. She is surrounded by a Furby (She had several who talked to each another and there was sometimes a disquieting twitter—in the old sense—behind her when I called home), a frog (she collected them), a stuffed dog that taps its foot and moves an umbrella as “Singin‘ the Rain” plays, an old VHS of Johnny Carson shows and a book about “Guiding Light,” her favorite soap opera. The symbol of her devotion to Bill Clinton, a hand puppet of the former president given to her by my cousin, Alison, did not wear well and will need to be replaced. What is not so well represented in this collection is my mother’s love of books.

My obsession with books came entirely from my mother. I was the first grandchild on my mother’s side and my grandmother loved bringing me gifts. My mother didn’t like this. Her family had little money and she didn’t want me to expect a present every time my grandparents visited.

“If you have to get her something, get her a book,” mom said.

I became the owner of countless Little Golden Books and a whole series of Louisa May Alcott novels. I had many Little House books and a lot of Doctor Seuss. During my childhood and adolescence the Scholastic Book Service sold books in schools and the day the shipment came was always an exciting one for me.

As I got older, my mother still emphasized the importance of books and doing well in school. I was the only child I knew who didn’t have fights with her parents over cleaning her room. It was perfectly acceptable to befriend the dust bunnies, curl up on the unmade bed and read.

I was never told I wasn’t allowed to read a particular book. My mother assured me I might read whatever I liked. She told me she didn’t worry about my being tainted by dirty books. She worried that I would be bored. When, at about 14 I tried reading Lolita, mom’s fears were realized.

During her later years, Mom got her stories from T. V. and movies. The last book I remember her reading was Sue Grafton’s P is for Peril. Shortly before she died, she said to me, “Stephanie, I don’t know anyone who feels about books the way you do.”

“And whose fault is that?” I asked.

My mother, who was not always particularly happy during her last years, gave me the most delightful smile.

Stephanie Patterson

The Demise of the Bookplate?

I hope not. But – if the book disappears, so will all the ancillary products that come with it, such as bookcases, bookends, bookmarks, and bookplates – to name a few. What a sad world it will be without these familiar and lovely objects.

When I was ten years old I proudly announced to a close family friend that I wanted to be a writer. She was the first person to take me seriously. She looked at me sternly and said, “First you must become a reader.” From that day on this friend gave me a beautiful book on every birthday, and once she gave me a package of bookplates. They were decorated with a tree and had a space for me to put my name. I remember carefully printing my name in each space and proudly pasting them in my favorite books. I was twelve by then, and had quite a collection.

I checked out the history of the bookplate in my encyclopedia and learned they originated in the 1500s, when a book was a great rarity, and a valuable commodity. The Germans were the first to produce plates in volume. Albrecht Durer designed and engraved a number. The first plates were engraved on wood, copper or zinc, and were usually ornate designs, involving the owner’s coat-of-arms and sometimes their portrait. One of the portrait bookplates depicted Samuel Pepys . There are several societies of bookplate collectors. If Ex-libris ever disappears from our vocabulary, those collectors will probably become very rich.

My only other contact with the bookplate was when I had a printing business. One of my products was bookplates for children. I illustrated them with pictures from old children’s books. One of the first orders I received was from FAO Schwartz. I printed the plates on glue-coated stock. Unfortunately the moisture from the offset press caused the paper to curl. (I had a habit of taking orders for things I had not quite mastered.) A crisis developed – and I had a deadline to meet! With great difficulty, I located a brand of paper that didn’t curl, but I was up all night meeting that deadline. It was a big thrill to see those little boxes of bookplates displayed in a basket on a counter of an FAO Schwartz store in Ardmore, PA. The illustration was of a little girl looking at a bird on her windowsill. I had lifted it from an old edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses, and one of my favorite poems, “Time to Rise.”

You remember how it goes. “A birdie with a yellow bill, sat upon my windowsill…”

Robin Hathaway

Library Memories

Recently I confided to a friend that I was stumped for a topic for my next blog. She came up with a magic word. “Libraries. Why don’t you write about your library experiences?” Needless to say, I started musing on this subject and was amazed at how much I remembered.

I have no memory of my first library card. This was because when I was six my parents bought a house that came complete with a library. The old doctor who had lived there with his wife had left their library intact, complete with most of the Harvard Classics and an enormous encyclopedia (which I still have). Also, my mother was a great reader. Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope were her favorites, but she usually managed to get her hands on the latest fiction, too. So you see, I had no need to go to a library.

However, there were two libraries at my school: The Children’s Library, where I discovered The Boxcar Children, the first and best of that series. It had a battered orange cover and was illustrated with black silhouettes. The Friend's Free Library, also connected to the school, was strictly non-fiction, and where my friends and I used to gather down in the basement and read The Kinsey Report. Hot stuff in 1945!

The next library I remember was the Morgan Library where I had my first glimpse of a Jane Austen manuscript. Mansfield Park, I believe it was. Her neat, cursive handwriting inscribed in a lined copybook was a marvel. Did she never cross anything out or make a mistake? It seemed not.

Then there was the 3rd floor room in the New York Public Library and an exhibit of original manuscripts and first editions of the works of romantic British poets. The most thrilling was a first edition of “The Ancient Mariner” in which Coleridge had made a correction in ink in his own hand. In the line, “The horned Moon, with one bright star within the nether tip,“ he had changed “the” to “its,” and the black ink, because of its iron content, had turned a glossy copper. Oh, my!

Once my husband and I did a tour of towns with old libraries. The one I remember best was at Milford, Pennsylvania, on the Delaware River. The building was stone, solid, and gray on the outside, but inside the sun slanted through the windows, catching the dust motes, filling the interior with a golden, gossamer haze. I headed for the Children’s section because I love old children’s books. The stacks were open, and what a treasure trove I found. Copies of St. Nicholas, Chatterbox, fairy-tales illustrated by Arthur Rackham, A Child’s Garden of Verses illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith, and Treasure Island, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. I could have browsed all day, reliving my childhood, dreaming old dreams.

Robin Hathaway