The Beloved Dozen..... Book One

I'm reading a gem of a non-fiction book,  "The Book Girl" by Sarah Clarkson, about the power reading has to transform a life. Clarkson includes a chapter listing the twelve books that shaped her into the woman she is today.  I began thinking....... What books broadened, or shaped, me?

As I read the chapter, I started jotting a list of the twelve I could say the same about. Some of her titles are quite a bit more hefty than those that make up mine, with authors like Charlotte Bronte or Tolstoy or Wendell Berry and I added some of those to my 'read someday' list.

My list of authors and books is much more generic, but what is is. Each book that came to mind held a place in my memory, as one that played a part in who I am today. I thought I'd start with one book, and add another now and then throughout the rest of fall and winter, til I make it through the list.

Fifty plus years ago I was a string bean of a kid, in the awkward middle school years. Patricia and Carolyn and Rose and I carried our case of 45's to each others homes and held dance parties in our back bedrooms, or bolted on our metal roller skates and swooshed up and down our driveways. We stole apples and smoked cigarettes in the piney woods three streets over. But some days I slipped away to any empty corner of our house I could find where I read for pure entertainment, just trying to pass the hours of those hotter than blue blazes summer days. Then there were days I read to go somewhere else, even if it was only in my head, when life held the residue of yesterday's spinning out of control. Books were the lifeline I instinctively clung to.

My first 'Broaden Your World' book:

Misty of Chincoteague. Author Marguerite Henry. Written in 1947 for ages 8 - 12 years old.

The eight of us took up every single inch of our washed out blue, three bedroom house in the middle of the block. To escape the heat, we played under the cover of the carport, while my mother filled clotheslines stretching across the back yard with load after load of wet laundry. The translucent blue green wings of dragonflies sparkled like diamonds as they danced atop wooden clothespins holding bedsheets that snapped like white flags in the wind, and the faded denim legs of my brothers' blue jeans stuck straight out - a row of unstuffed scarecrows.

That summer the brightly colored bookmobile pulled up at the end of the block I lived on, opened the door and invited me in week after week.  It was richness beyond measure to be allowed to check out any three books I wanted, and take them home with me. Misty of Chincoteague felt huge in my small hands. Its pages were filled with beautiful pictures, unlike most children's books of that time and it told the story of two children my age who were saving their money to buy a colt.

The story of Phantom and her colt, Misty widened my world to the east coast I'd never seen and barely heard of in geography class. I'd not only never left the state of Texas, I'd rarely even left the city I lived in. This beautiful picture book accomplished what all children's books should do - it opened my eyes, and mind to a world so much bigger than I'd yet imagined. It showed me a world that included the ocean's coast where herds of horses ran wild and free and children who had dreams to possibly do the same someday.

Thank you, Marguerite Henry, for writing a book that transformed me, maybe even saved me a little. It will always stand in my heart as the book whose opened pages opened up my little world for the very first time.