I remember my first happy encounters with Chris Van Allsburg's Polar Express and Jumanji, Shel Silverstein's poem "Sick", Roald Dahl's The B.F.G. and Matilda. I still feel cozy and curled up in bed, listening to the sound of my mother's voice, whenever I see Beverly Cleary's Ramona books or James Howe's Howliday Inn series standing on the library shelves.
Even as an adult, the magical first encounters in literature are still coming. I say all the time to people that you are never too old for a good kids book. Though often recommended, I never read J.R.R Tolkein, C.S. Lewis or J.K. Rowling until after college, but when I did... wow! First meetings with a variety of incredible characters were in store over the thousands of pages to come! I met a very unsafe but good Lion, a most beloved and fearless 1 foot tall talking mouse, a powerful wizard, a devoted hobbit who would walk with and even carry his burdened friend to the "end of all things", the Boy Who Lived and did remarkable things, and the very wise and wonderful man with half-moon spectacles who helped him along the way (whose first name, by the way, will be the name of a golden retriever I will get sometime in my life... yep, already decided :) ) . Even writing about them all makes me smile and remember. As Cornelia Funke often expresses in her Ink... books (which have been my audio reads, lately), its almost as if you leave a piece of yourself, a memory stuck between the pages of favorite stories. It washes over you any time you see or think about the book. This is so true for me!
I never thought about a career as a librarian growing up... seems so obvious to me now, though! When I'm moving, books are the last things to be packed, and the first boxes emptied-they are my anchor. The job just makes sense for me! Some people think being a librarian is a nerdy, glasses on a chain, finger shushing sort of job, but truly how could surrounding myself in a world of words and getting kids excited about doing the same be anything but great?
I guess all my rhapsodizing about the wonderful power of words stems from my reading/ book discussing lately. Cornelia Funke is a prolific writer in german and thanks to the efforts of a young bilingual fan, she translated some of her best work into english. Though her others, Dragon Rider, Thief Lord, Ghosthunter series, and Igraine the Brave are wonderful, we have been discussing the Ink books this past week: Inkheart, Inkspell, and just released Inkdeath. A movie is being made of Inkheart that will be released in January and looks pretty promising! I believe the website is www.inkheartmovie.com. The whole plot of the story wraps around the power of words and reading them aloud. What if someone read a story out loud with such skill that they could actually bring the characters to life? Absolutely fascinating! The audio recordings of Inkheart and Inkspell are also fabulous. I recommend this series (and the movie, hopefully) highly to anyone who loves to read and loves a good adventure story! Get lost in a great book today!
