From: bfahey at comcast.net <bfahey>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 16:11:59 +0000

There were not many books in my house, so I remember all the ones that we had. They all seemed important to me then, and they still do. The book that opened a new world for me was Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. A librarian named Mrs. Fox showed it to me and told me all about the Newbery Medal. The library became a brand new place for me after that, as I found that I could just simply get lost in books.

The other book that moved me in a new direction was Slaughterhouse Five. It was just weird enough at a time when I was feeling pretty weird. Again, things started rearranging themselves after I read that book.
 -------------- Original message ---------------------- From: Connie Rockman <connie.rock at snet.net>
>
> > I must also concur with Connie on Daughter of Time. That book and
> > April Morning by Howard Fast fed my growing love of history and
> > historic places. In high school I wrote a paper on the historical
> > accuracy of April Morning, which is about the opening of the American
> > Revolution.
> >
> Melody and I are really on the same wave length - I am now reminded
> that Howard Fast had a huge influence on me as a young adult. It wasn't
> April Morning, but another of his books - Freedom Road - about the
> Reconstruction Era, that touched me so much. Having grown up in a
> family that "kept to our own" I had very little contact with people of
> other races and cultures as a child. Reading about Gideon and the
> other freed slaves of that period in Fast's incredibly layered story
> opened my eyes and heart to a wider world and taught me much more than
> any history course did about the eventual failure of Reconstruction.
> The terrible toll of bigotry and prejudice in the post-war South (and
> by extension, any bigotry or prejudice) was seared in my young mind and
> changed the way I saw the world. It forever separated me from the way
> my family (still) thinks, charged my developing political
> sensibilities, and changed me in fundamental ways.
>
> After moving to Connecticut, many years after reading Howard Fast, I
> met his son Jonathan, who is a member of the church I attend, and he
> told me stories of living in fear as a child when his father was
> blacklisted during the McCarthy years and branded a Communist. To
> actually meet someone related to the writer who changed my life was an
> awesome experience.
> Connie
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Received on Wed 24 May 2006 11:11:59 AM CDT