Falling in Love with Reading

I found my love for reading early, despite the best efforts of my mother and a rural librarian.

That sounds bad. Let me explain.

First, a little background. I grew up near a small town in central Wisconsin, population just short of 700 people at the time. The library had limited hours in the summer, maybe two days per week. My family lived on a farm seven miles from this library. It was summertime. I was seven, the youngest of six children. We had two beat-up children’s books, a set of 20-year-old encyclopedias, a collection of farming-related magazines, and a Bible in the house as reading material. I begged and begged to go to the library. Finally, the day came that my mother agreed to take me.

My heart beat wildly on the drive to town. I raced Mom up the steps and into the library, stopping in front of the librarian at her desk. Having been taught not to talk to strangers, I waited there silently but impatiently for my mother to catch up to me.

When my mother finally made it, she quietly prompted me, “Go ahead, tell her what you want.”

“I get to pick out a book to read,” I blurted.

“This is her first visit to the library,” my mom explained.

The librarian pointed out the children’s book section and my shoulders fell. I had been reading my older sisters’ books over their shoulders for months. My sisters were 10 and 12 years my senior. These baby books were not what I had in mind. “I want a big girl book,” I whined.

The librarian started to say something, but Mom intervened. “She’s reading above grade level. I’ll help her find something.”

We made our way to the Young Adult section and she found The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. “I remember this being a good book,” she said as she pulled it off the shelf and handed it to me.

I proudly handed the heavy book (400 pages!) to the librarian. She looked at me critically, then stamped a card with the due date and slid it into the pocket glued to the inside of the back cover.

I hugged the book tightly to my chest all the way to the car and started reading on the way home. I had it open every spare moment for the following week, flying through it. I loved the characters and the parallels to my life on the farm. The day I finished reading it, I was in the back seat of the family sedan while we waited for our hog feed to be ground at the feed mill.  Not to spoil the ending if you haven’t read it, but the pet fawn, the yearling, dies at the end. I threw the book down on the floor of the car and started sobbing. My mother turned around and asked what the problem was.

“This is a terrible book! He died?! Why would you pick this book?”

She just smiled.

The next visit to the library, the librarian asked how I liked the book. I swear she smirked. I told her I liked it until the last chapter. I think I teared up a little as I said it. She said, “I think I have another book you’ll like then.” She got up from her desk and came back with Old Yeller. I don’t think I need to tell you how that one ended.

When I finished reading Old Yeller, I took it to my mother, slammed it down, and said tearfully, “What is it with you and that librarian?” Once again, Mom simply smiled.

That summer went on with me reading Black Beauty, National Velvet, and Charlotte’s Web. The only book I read that summer that wasn’t emotionally jarring was a book gifted me by my grandfather, The Borrowers.

You’d think that would have turned me off books forever. I honestly think what kept me reading was the hope of finding some book that made me laugh instead of cry. To this day, my favorite books are those that pull me in and make me feel deeply, the ones that “have all the feels.”