Booked For Summer
Summer days, for girls and women who have never lost their fascination with books, conjure visions of idyllic trips to the library and luxurious mountains of books to devour back at home.
A committee of women on The Spokesman-Review’s editorial staff has been studying how women are portrayed in the newspaper. As a part of that effort, committee members recently reminisced about their favorite childhood books and asked a group of girls who visited on Take Our Daughters To Work Day to describe theirs as well.
We wound up with a delightful assortment of essays and reading lists. This collection plants a tantalizing series of clues, not only about what constitutes a book a girl will love and long remember, but also about what grows and nourishes a young girl best.
The answer, it turns out, is not so simple as just a female character with a well-told story, although that’s important. Reading also helps girls flourish by establishing a lifelong habit of pursuing books and written words, by enlarging their vision and by entrusting them with profound ideas and difficult themes.
School’s out this week. Time to head to the library, girls, and dive in.
KOSINSKI’S BOOK WAS PART OF ONE GIRL’S COMING-OF-AGE By Jackie Davenport Staff writer
My Aunt Phyllis gave me “The Cockpit” by Jerzy Kosinski to read when I was 13. Aunt Phyllis, my intelligent, sophisticated aunt, who lived in her own beautiful apartment overlooking Marina del Rey, Calif., received her bachelor’s degree while she was in a convent. She received her master’s degree from Loyola Marymount while working fulltime as a special education teacher. She also loved travel, the opera, classical music and art.
I wanted to grow up and be like her.
I remember devouring every word of this book, reading each page slowly. As I think back on the book, it was a rather graphic story about a German orphan who was left in the countryside by his parents to avoid capture by the Nazis. This book wasn’t enchanting or uplifting. This book influenced me because Aunt Phyllis had confidence in me; she knew I could understand the book. We talked about the book after I read it. I was intelligent! Her love of learning enveloped me. I could grow up to be like her!
I hold these memories like fine china. Aunt Phyllis was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 49. She lives in a home and no longer utters a word.
IN THEIR WORDS: GIRLS DESCRIBE FAVORITE READS
I enjoyed “Shabanu” by Suzanne Fisher Stapes a lot because it focused on a young girl named Sharon growing up in the Choliston Desert. Her life was very different from her father’s (he chose her future husband). I learned so much about how differently other people live. Compared to Shabanu’s life, the life of an American is easy. The book “Shabanu” is followed by another book, “Haveli.” “Haveli” tells the rest of her life story. Unfortunately, it leaves the reader very depressed.
Beth Webster, age 14
“Roll of Thunder, Hear Me Cry” was a favorite because it made me realize how racial equality has not evolved as much as people like to think it has. It’s set in the ‘20s or ‘30s but it doesn’t seem very different from today.
I also really loved “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck because it caused me to think about friendship and choices. The book was full of symbolism and figurative language about life and the decisions associated with it.
I loved the “Little House on the Prairie” books because Laura was a lot like me. She was always curious, but just a little bit bad.
Kate Kershner, age 13
The reason I like the “Sweet Valley High” series so much is because of Liz and Jess. They are both funny kids who go on one adventure after another. When they know what they want, they go for it.
Julia Dobler, age 13
I like “Anne of Green Gables” because we shared the same problems: red hair, freckles, school competition. I feel her need for a “bosom friend” and appreciate her confusion growing up with different peer personalities.
“Little Women” had characters I could identify with. I know a “Beth” or an “Amy,” a “Meg” and I feel like a “Jo.” I could relate to their growing up and how each changed as they grew.
Kelly Guilfoil, age 14
“Little House in the Big Woods” I think I have read dozens of times over and over again. I loved the vivid description of the chores, holidays, etc., of what happened back then in the country.
I think I also loved this book because all my life I’ve lived in the city and I’ve always wanted to live in the country like Laura Ingalls did. Such a wonderful book. A classic.
I liked “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” because it has wonderful creative writing of the hard life that one strong-willed young girl had to go through. She had many horrible things happen to her in her life but still, she lived through and ended up as an intelligent, talented, strong woman.
Anna Sowa, age 14
BOOK OFFERED ROLE MODELS OF STRONG WOMEN By Kristina Johnson Staff writer
“These were the Rommely women: Mary, the mother, Evy, Sissy and Katie, her daughters, and Francie, who would grow up to be a Rommely woman even though her name was Nolan. They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft, fluttery voices.
“But they were made out of thin, invisible steel.”
My mother gave me a copy of Betty Smith’s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” when I was in sixth grade.
From the minute I opened it, I was captivated by the book’s strong, capable women. They loved their men, but they didn’t need them to survive. Eleven-year-old Francie, and her mother, Katie, struggled to keep themselves fed, scrubbing floors and scouring other people’s trash for precious rags, tin foil and glass in turn-of-the-century New York City. Hard work and tenement living didn’t steal their dignity.
The men in the story, mostly unreliable charmers, were more of a hindrance than a help, skimming the edges of the women’s lives but rarely staying long.
Ironically, it was my father who urged my sister and me to be self-reliant, chanting the mantra that we should never rely on anyone but ourselves to put a check in the bank or walls around us.
I identified with Francie, an awkward preteen and voracious reader who sought solace in her rundown flat made warm and comforting by the company of women.
MY FAVORITE BOOK IS EVERY BOOK By Carla T. Savalli Staff writer
Words
I like their sounds
I like the way they look on paper, printed in neat rows with big letters and little letters and sometimes with pictures.
Words
Sometimes they rhyme. Sometimes they are fun to say, over and over like green eggs and ham and Sam I am.
Sometimes they are very important and I must read them twice and three times, in my head and out loud to imaginary friends, to my parents, to my animals.
Faraway places with exotic names. Mysterious tales of whodunit and why. Supersmart sleuths like Nancy and the Hardy Boys and big people books with hard outsides and hard-to-understand ideas.
Words
They live in the books that sit on my shelf. I take them down and play with them all the time. Each one is my favorite.
The sound of words lives in my head.
My mother works where the words live. She brings them home every night. She is my library card.
The words are my life.
NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARY INTRODUCED GIRL TO LIFETIME OF READING By Susan English Staff writer
I would prefer that classics such as “Anne of Green Gables” or “Alice in Wonderland” had launched me from girlhood to adulthood.
But really, it was Freddy the pig and his friends Jinx the cat, Mrs. Wiggins the cow and Charles the rooster who inspired me to the life of a voracious reader.
Of course only as an adult did I learn the name of the author of such books as “Freddy Goes to the North Pole,” “Freddy Goes Camping” and “Freddy and the Baseball Team From Mars.” Walter R. Brooks, when he wasn’t writing more than 30 children’s books, worked for the prestigious New Yorker magazine, alongside E.B. White, who also wrote about a pig of “Charlotte’s Web” fame.
An old almanac, a world atlas and plentiful copies of the Bible were the books in our house; my parents subscribed to the philosophy that libraries were the keepers of books, which we could borrow for free and return promptly to avoid overdue fines.
Almost as soon as we could read, my brother and I were allowed our own library cards, which were stamped on the back every time we checked out a book. Reading became a mission, and fortunately there was a library branch within walking distance of our house.
Once weekly all through the summer my Mom would walk us to the library, a dark and formal brick building on Montgomery and Monroe that now houses law offices. I loved that library.
I loved the cozy, low lighting and the whispers of the librarians behind the counter. I loved the smell and the big empty tables where you could spread out all your books and choose the 12 you were allowed to take home that week.
One summer I checked out 12 Freddy the pig books on our first visit. And I raced through them. I liked those books so well, I checked them out again the next week. And again the next week. And the next week.
By that time, having memorized the stories, I began writing Freddy the pig skits and, with my brother and little friends, staging them in the basement. Mercifully, the librarian suggested others should have the chance to read “Freddy Goes to Florida” and “Freddy Plays Football” and refused to send them home with me again. Hence began my journey of reading my way through the rest of the books in the library.
In retrospect, it wasn’t Freddy or any of the other books I read as a 7-year-old that shaped life choices. It was the weekly visits to that library.
For the habit of carrying armloads of books home, of sitting quietly each day and of sometimes taking comfort in reading a well-written story over and over and over is what stuck.
FAVORITE BOOKS Chosen by The Spokesman-Review staff
“The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath
“The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett
“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith
“Green Eggs and Ham” by Dr. Seuss
“The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams
“Mr. Bear “by Majorie Flack
“Gone With the Wind “by Margaret Mitchell
“Little House on the Prairie” series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
“To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
“Charlotte’s Web” by E.B. White
“Nancy Drew” series by Caroline Keene
FAVORITE BOOKS Chosen by staff members’ daughters.
“Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank
“The Babysitters Club” by Anne Martin
“The Baily School Kids” series by D. Dadey
“Berenstain Bears” series by Stan and Jan Berenstain
“The Box Car Children” series by Gertrude Warner
“Cages” by P. Kehret
“The Client” by John Grisham
“Danger in Quicksand Swamp” by Wallace
“The Endless Steppe” by Deborah Hautzig
“Fudgeamania” by Judy Blume, “Goosebumps” series by R.L. Odell
“Julie of the Wolves” by Jean Craighead George
“Little House on the Prairie” series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott
“Lizard Song” by George Shannon
“Matilda” by Roald Dahl
“Nancy Drew” series by Caroline Keene
“The Night I Followed My Dog” by N. Laden
“Nothing” by Judy Blume
“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
“Old Yeller” by Gipson
“Pippi Longstockings” by Astrid Lindgren
“Rescue” by Josh Meguier
“Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” by Mildred Taylor
“Scary Stories I, II, III” by A. Schwartz
“Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind” by Suzanne Fisher Staples
“The Shining” by Stephen King
“Superfudge” by Judy Blume
“To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
“The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams
“Where the Red Fern Grows” by Wilson Rawls
“The Witches” by Roald Dahl
“Zlata’s Diary” by Zlata Filipovic
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Staff illustrations by Molly Quinn
The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Jamie Tobias Neely, Jackie Davenport, Kristina Johnson, Carla T. Savalli and Susan English Staff writers