Musings of a Reader

The Growing Reader

What is your earliest memory of owning a book? Was it a gift? Did you buy it for yourself? Ever since your first book, I'm guessing that more have accumulated. Your shelves are getting fuller, possibly more diverse, and even out of hand. One thing to remember is keeping a bookshelf is very much like keeping a plant. What's the first step with a plant? You need to start from a seed.

Your first book. It doesn't have to be the first book you ever read, but sometimes it is. I think of it as the first book that stood out to you. The first book that made you enjoy reading. As a child, my mom would always read to me. The stories that were repeated over and over, and eventually taught me to read, were ones by Dr. Seuss.

The Cat in the Hat.

Green Eggs and Ham.

There's a Wocket in my Pocket.

These were some of my earliest memories of books. There were man, many more. At one point, my brother and I had a small bookcase in our shared room. That's where all the children's books would go and we'd tussle about which books belonged to who. I got to the age where I made an allowance and could start saving up for books that I wanted to read. These stretched out into subjects like dinosaurs, dragons, fantasy. Those were my seed books, the books that planted themselves into my life and encouraged me to grow.

To get a seed to become a plant, you have to water it regularly. Now that the seeds of literature have been planted in your heart, you read. You read whatever books you enjoy or books for school. You read, read, read whatever you can get your hands on. Some kids were lucky enough to have supportive parents who bought you copies of your favorite books. Most kids, me included, were lucky enough to discover a magical place where books are free.

The Library.

Neil Gaiman once said, "Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one."

My mom would take me and my younger brother to the library after school once a week or every other and let us pick out any book we liked and bring it home. I remember how excited I was when I learned some of the books had cassette tapes attached, so I could LISTEN to the book as I was reading it. My parents were lovely in the respect that they watered my brother and me. They let us read whatever we wanted and let us pester the librarians, although they knew when to intervene as I was a child who asked tens of hundreds of questions.

The library is a cool glass of water to the dehydrated reader.

Most plants need to be given more room as they grow. You can't always keep your plant in that small container forever. They need room to expand and stretch themselves out. My mom had a general rule as I grew older and started reading more complicated books: "You can read whatever you want and I won't stop you, but if you have questions, please let me know." Some of these questions pertained to words I didn't know (sometimes swear words). Some of the questions were about sex, bad decisions, and sad endings. My mom was and is always there when I desperately need to talk about what I'm reading.

Sosuke Natsukawa wrote in his novel The Cat Who Saved Books: "Reading a book is a lot like climbing a mountain. . . Reading isn't only for pleasure or entertainment. Sometimes you need to examine the same lines deeply, read the same sentences over again. Sometimes you sit there, head in hands, only progressing at a painstakingly slow pace. And the result of all this hard work and careful study is that suddenly you're there and your field of vision expands. It's like finding a great view at the end of a long climbing trail."

Most people's first experience with looking deeper into books is with school. As you get older and classes get harder, most teachers will show you how to examine the text, find the themes, and compare what you're reading (maybe a book from over a hundred years ago) to what is going on in the present. This gives us room to grow.

Sadly, this is where someone might forego the joy of reading because it becomes overwhelming. There is no shame for those who do not read like the addicts and the bibliophiles, but I do think it's a little sad that they've had a negative experience with reading in the past.

My brother doesn't classify himself as a "reader". He keeps up in his classes and reads a novel occasionally, but his true passion lies in comics. He reads comic books, graphic novels, and manga and flourishes in these worlds. That doesn't make him any less of a reader. He's just found a different medium to read. Just because a book has pictures, does not mean it is less valid as a piece of literature. In my opinion, the best books are the ones with illustrations in them. Look at Beatrix Potter, Dave McKean, Colleen Doran, Earnest Shepherd, and so many more that have brought life to writing.

Another aspect of keeping a plant alive is to give it sun. In terms of reading, I think "sun" has to do with reading what you want to read. It's always good to challenge ourselves, but you need to forge your own path with books and articles and things that you enjoy. Haruki Murakami wrote: "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."

I have always been a reader, but I think I started to really branch out when I began reading books that weren't about me. Books where I was not the target audience. In high school we read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which is a book about a father speaking to his son on institutionalized racism and how the color of our skin determines more than we'd like. I continue to read a more diverse array of books than when I was younger because now I am aware that I have privilege whether that's from me being white or cisgender or middle class. Knowing this, I can actively search for books that are about other people. I can enjoy them and learn from them and heap praises onto them because they are about an experience that I have never been a part of.

As of 2021, there are so many more books about this than when I was in school in the 2010's. Even though I'm an adult, I still enjoy children's, middle reader and YA books because I get to see what people are experiencing now. Also, I feel like I owe it to my younger self to read about these experiences. These important stories.

When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller tells a beautifully crafted story about a Korean American family.

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass is a fast-paced story about a black boy who can see ghosts.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a story that I've shared with my mother, and then she shared it with her mother and we all found something different between the lines.

The bigger a plant grows, the more leaves and stems and flowers it gets. Books accumulate on our shelves and in our hearts. By the time you're an adult you already have so many favorites, if not one specific one. Although, choosing a favorite book is no easy task. For most people, it's constantly changing depending on what you're reading. Sometimes with plants, you can taking a clipping and give it to someone else and they can help it grow. That's what happens when we tell friends and family about books we like. Or if we write reviews online or in our journals or blog pages. When we pass books on to other people that is a guarantee that your plant will grow and flourish. You are passing on knowledge, experience, perspective, joy, and love. You are sharing something that means a lot to you and sometimes that can be scary.

While you're clipping off leaves, you are also giving books away. You're giving them to friends. You're putting them in Little Free Libraries. You're selling them. You're moving them around. We can't always keep every single book that passes through our hands, but that is the way of life. It is constantly changing.

Sometimes our plant wilts. Sometimes all the leaves fall off. Sometimes it burns in the sun. Even when you think it is dead, there may still be strong roots that if you care for will bring your plant back. And those strong roots? Those are all because of that seed.