CCBC-Net Archives
[CCBC-Net] Life-changing books
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: balkinbuddies at aol.com <balkinbuddies>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 14:03:53 -0400
As a child, I didn't read a lot of children's books. I was shy and my mother wanted me to "get my nose out of books" and go out and make friends. She never censored what I read, she just wanted me to read less and have more of a social life. By the time I came along, my parents didn't read much anymore. At one time, they did, though. Before television, there was radio. But before radio, they read books.
My first life-changing book was Wuthering Heights. I discovered it one day when I was 8 or 9 years old in an old sheet-draped bookcase in our dusty, unfinished attic. No kidding. I really did. The bookcase was filled with old books my parents had forgotten about. All the books were yellowing paperbacks from the 1930s, and the cover of Wuthering Heights featured a cruelly handsome Heathcliff bending over a pretite blond Catherine. What I loved about Wuthering Heights was its connectedness to the past. There was a short bio of Emily Bronte on the first page, and the fact that she wrote it in the 1800s, combined with the intriguing characters and setting, made me feel like I was eavesdropping on the past. Reading it at that age was hard going. I didn't understand a lot of the words and even my dictionary failed me at times, especially the parts that were written in dialect. But I really enjoyed it -- the intense emotions, the life and death struggles -- these were so powerful. So I was pretty persistent. I read
it every year for years, well into my teens, and liked it better each year. There were othe books in that old bookcase -- books by Erle Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde -- all my parents' ancient cast offs. And I sampled those too. My teachers didn't like seeing me with them. I guess they thought they were too violent or too adult. So I became even more of a sneak reader. To this day, I still like trash as much as great literature.
My second life-changing book was The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. It was the first play I ever read, so of course, I had to try writing one of my own. It was hard, though, and more than anything I wanted to meet Paul Zindel and ask him a thousand questions about playwrighting. I got that chance many years later when I was working at HarperCollins, setting up author appearances. Paul was a lovely person and we came to be good friends. I still miss him, but I have some wonderful memories. He was a good hero to have in my life.
It's amazing how far a couple of books can carry you, all the way to the offices of a New York publisher and beyond. When I look back at where I came from, I see my Buffalo neighborhood haunted by the playmates I rarely played with, many of whom ended up in jail, on drugs, as unwed parents without jobs, or dead. And whenever I feel my successes in life have been too few, I remember that world and know that my ticket out of it was Emily Bronte and Paul Zindel.
-----Original Message----- From: Arthur Slade <arthur.slade at gmail.com> To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Sent: Wed, 24 May 2006 10:26:52 -0500 Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Life-changing books
The book that changed me was THE BOOK OF THREE by Lloyd Alexander. I went to school in a small town (pop. 280) and our school's library seemed to be made up mostly of Hardy Boys mysteries, donated encyclopedias, and westerns. Somewhere in all of that was a hardcover copy of THE BOOK OF THREE. I read it for the first time when I was in grade four and it felt as though my mind was expanding. It was the first fantasy book I'd encountered. I didn't know authors could write about other worlds. Other times. And that pig keepers could be so interesting. I can still picture where it was located on the shelf (of a library that has long since been torn down). Twenty years after I graduated, I was able to buy that very same copy when the library had a sale. According to the library card I was the first ever to take that book out. In fact I took it out a total of four times. I was also the last to take it out. No one had signed it out since I left school.
Arthur Slade
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 14:03:53 -0400
As a child, I didn't read a lot of children's books. I was shy and my mother wanted me to "get my nose out of books" and go out and make friends. She never censored what I read, she just wanted me to read less and have more of a social life. By the time I came along, my parents didn't read much anymore. At one time, they did, though. Before television, there was radio. But before radio, they read books.
My first life-changing book was Wuthering Heights. I discovered it one day when I was 8 or 9 years old in an old sheet-draped bookcase in our dusty, unfinished attic. No kidding. I really did. The bookcase was filled with old books my parents had forgotten about. All the books were yellowing paperbacks from the 1930s, and the cover of Wuthering Heights featured a cruelly handsome Heathcliff bending over a pretite blond Catherine. What I loved about Wuthering Heights was its connectedness to the past. There was a short bio of Emily Bronte on the first page, and the fact that she wrote it in the 1800s, combined with the intriguing characters and setting, made me feel like I was eavesdropping on the past. Reading it at that age was hard going. I didn't understand a lot of the words and even my dictionary failed me at times, especially the parts that were written in dialect. But I really enjoyed it -- the intense emotions, the life and death struggles -- these were so powerful. So I was pretty persistent. I read
it every year for years, well into my teens, and liked it better each year. There were othe books in that old bookcase -- books by Erle Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde -- all my parents' ancient cast offs. And I sampled those too. My teachers didn't like seeing me with them. I guess they thought they were too violent or too adult. So I became even more of a sneak reader. To this day, I still like trash as much as great literature.
My second life-changing book was The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. It was the first play I ever read, so of course, I had to try writing one of my own. It was hard, though, and more than anything I wanted to meet Paul Zindel and ask him a thousand questions about playwrighting. I got that chance many years later when I was working at HarperCollins, setting up author appearances. Paul was a lovely person and we came to be good friends. I still miss him, but I have some wonderful memories. He was a good hero to have in my life.
It's amazing how far a couple of books can carry you, all the way to the offices of a New York publisher and beyond. When I look back at where I came from, I see my Buffalo neighborhood haunted by the playmates I rarely played with, many of whom ended up in jail, on drugs, as unwed parents without jobs, or dead. And whenever I feel my successes in life have been too few, I remember that world and know that my ticket out of it was Emily Bronte and Paul Zindel.
-----Original Message----- From: Arthur Slade <arthur.slade at gmail.com> To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Sent: Wed, 24 May 2006 10:26:52 -0500 Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Life-changing books
The book that changed me was THE BOOK OF THREE by Lloyd Alexander. I went to school in a small town (pop. 280) and our school's library seemed to be made up mostly of Hardy Boys mysteries, donated encyclopedias, and westerns. Somewhere in all of that was a hardcover copy of THE BOOK OF THREE. I read it for the first time when I was in grade four and it felt as though my mind was expanding. It was the first fantasy book I'd encountered. I didn't know authors could write about other worlds. Other times. And that pig keepers could be so interesting. I can still picture where it was located on the shelf (of a library that has long since been torn down). Twenty years after I graduated, I was able to buy that very same copy when the library had a sale. According to the library card I was the first ever to take that book out. In fact I took it out a total of four times. I was also the last to take it out. No one had signed it out since I left school.
Arthur Slade
-- ___________________________ **Art's Podcast: Writing for YA _at_ http://www.arthurslade.com **Monsterology Tundra/Random House (out now) **Megiddo's Shadow HarperCanada/Wendy Lamb Books (Fall '06) _______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-netReceived on Wed 24 May 2006 01:03:53 PM CDT
