Musings of a Reader

Edgar Allan Poe Lives in my Backpack

IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL I discovered that I could carry more than one book with me in my backpack. I usually carried around the book I checked out from the media center and my free-reading book (usually a Warrior cats book). As a child, my backpack was small, so I could only fit so many things in it. I had my notebooks for class, my glue, my pencils, a drawing book, and my reading material; not to mention all the homework that I eventually lost.

At this time in my life, the media center was a vast oasis of stories and worlds. To a ten year old, the shelves of books were mountainous. I had to use a stool sometimes to reach the books I desired. This was a great opportunity to influence future readers. Once a week we'd go to the media center to check out a book to read. We'd have almost all class period to choose which one we wanted, check it out, then sit back down to read. I found it difficult to manage between browsing shelves upon shelves of books and wanting to sit down to read until the class was over.

This is where I began my love for Kate DiCamillo books, nonfiction books, and anything about animals. I would sit and read The Tale of Despereaux, checking it out three times before I finished it. My reading didn't get left in the media center, though. I got in trouble in class for reading a book hidden under my desk. I would read at home with a night light when I was supposed to be sleeping. I was sitting in the nurse's office at school, reading DiCamillo's The Tiger Rising between bouts of throwing up.

So, when I moved on to middle school (with a bigger backpack) I was excited for all the new things I would be able to read. There was one thing I didn't count on, though.

Backpacks were not allowed.

When I entered middle school, you were supposed to keep your backpack in your locker and carry a binder full of your notebooks around with you. This was definitely something I wasn't used to. The idea of carrying everything with me, without a backpack, was bizarre. The only solution I found, with my developing ADHD, was to carry all my distractions with me. I carried my binder and on top of that was my sketch book and on top of that were all my free-reading books. Sometimes I'd have up to four of them. This didn't help when some were thick.

My vocabulary and literary appetite were growing, so I needed to go out and find new books to fill it. A house across the alley from mine was having a yard sale near the beginning of my first year in middle school. That was where I met one of my great inspirations.

For the low price of 25¢ I gifted myself a tattered copy of The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. This was a thin, torn book but a book all the same. I cherished this book. I carried it with me wherever I went. I didn't even read it at the time. Just being able to hold the book was enough for me.

In fifth grade, I didn't understand Poe's writing at all. I read the little book several times, but I was confused the whole way through. The words didn't stand out and everything seemed to blur together. I kept carrying around his book in hopes it would rub off on me. It was to no avail. I put the copy away and stopped carrying it with me.

By the time I reached middle school, though, I had changed over that year. I understood bigger words and knew about motifs and themes and symbolism. I was reading bigger books and had read a few of Poe's poems and shorter stories in class. Now that my teacher explained his writing to me, a new door opened in my mind. I was delighted with every word he wrote. I copied down his poems endlessly. I memorized choice lines from The Raven. He wrote about things that people tried to avoid talking about. Death. Pain. Despair.

I was not new to these concepts in middle school. I had outlived a few pets and family members by the age of twelve and I understood the existential dread of living. In high school I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and mild depression, and later on with borderline personality disorder. Reading Poe's work was a gift, though. It made me feel like I wasn't alone with these feelings.

I tried to imitate his macabre writing in my own poems, which I still have stashed in a box under my bed. They were dark and depressing, but not macabre. I would write painfully descriptive stories on decay and dying. Death was fascinating and beautiful to me. I read The Tell-Tale Heart every year around Halloween. I read his poems constantly, checking out collections from the library.

The day came eventually, when I had saved up enough of my allowance to buy a book. At the time, there was a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Highland Park, St.Paul. That's where I would go when I didn't go to the Half Price Books across the street. I wanted something new and all mine. There was a shelf in the young readers section of classics that I always gravitated towards. That was where I found my prize. A new, hardcover copy of The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. I bought it for $10. The book had beautiful illustrations and a smooth dust jacket. I took the dust jacket off and threw it away, which I now cringe at.

From that day on, Edgar Allan Poe lived in my backpack. I would carry him to school with me and rest him on my binder throughout the day. He'd eventually go in my backpack again for the journey home. I would take the book out and admire it, reading his short stories and then putting him back in my bag for the next day.

I read many books in my three years of middle school and Poe was with me for all of it. I feel sentimental towards him now. I don't carry a copy of The Pit and the Pendulum with me wherever I go anymore, but I read his poems every year and dedicate October to his writing.

The book without its dust jacket is still laid out on mybookshelf.