From: LAURIE DRAUS <DRAUS>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 13:07:07 -0500

Talk about life-changing books--I was named after my mother's favorite book, Mountain Laurel, about a girl named Laurel who lives in the mountains where they grow. Except that my dad was afraid everyone would tease me about Laurel and Hardy, so she had to shorten it.

I read very early--I'd come home from kindergarten, tell my mother what letter we learned today, and then pick up the newspaper--and I read pretty much everything I could get my hands on when I was young, even my dad's household repair book sets!--but old books of my parents from the bookshelves especially, such as the Bobbsey Twins, Tuckaway House, and Alice in Wonderland. My aunt Nancy, who had been a fan in her youth, got me started on Nancy Drew, and like others I saw her as a strong self-possessed and capable female role model. I also remember Caddie Woodlawn and the Diamond in the Window from that period as affecting me strongly. Like some other here who got to keep their original reading copy, I got that copy of Caddie when the classroom library was weeded. It's pretty dilapidated but still well-loved.

I loved books about strong, capable, and/or heroic young people, and in junior high I particularly remember a book called Crissy at the Wheel, about a young girl about my age at the time, who learned to drive when cars were first invented. I devoured the Little House books then, and I remember another one that stayed with me more than hundreds of others I read--I've forgotten the title of it, but it had to do with a family of several Catholic children escaping on a train from a heavy-handed regime. It seems they had to travel without parents, and the eldest boy kept saying the rosary, praying that they wouldn't be caught. Being Protestant, I was unaware of rosaries before this, and I was fascinated by the idea of getting a sense of understanding about a real thing, important to many real people, from a fiction book. The idea of children being able to carry off something strong and brave and important really resonated with me from that book. I seem to recall it being rather thick and having a picture of children's faces in a train window on the cover.

In high school--and even today--I tended to like lighter, cheerier fare. While I can appreciate the "quality" of a Lord of the Flies, or a Scarlet Letter, they didn't really appeal to me at all internally. I've never developed much of a taste for "dark."

Two books I bought from book clubs were the ones I read over and over the most, probably hundreds of times--Cheaper by the Dozen and The Family Nobody Wanted--both coincidentally(?) the endearing and entertaining stories of real families with twelve children! I am sure they had an effect on me, or at least reflect things I already felt strongly about, because though I have only three children, fun and family are both of huge importance to me.

I couldn't begin to count how many times I read those two books--and also the Incredible Journey. I could read at a very high grade level, but found reading that came easy to be a relaxing elixir. Also thanks to my high school crush playing the part in a theater production at school, I checked out the books and started a lifelong affinity for Sherlock Holmes then--as many of you have probably seen, I even have him in my email signature!

In college, I most remember Watership Down as being striking and powerful, and later the Westing Game rose to the top of my Wow List, but, oh dear, this has run on much longer than I'd thought. Thanks to everyone for your stories. Lots of kindred spirits out there, and the feelings are often the same, even when the books are different!

Lauri Cahoon-Draus K-12 Library Media Specialist Suring School Libraries draus at suring.k12.wi.us
**suring
"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.
Received on Wed 24 May 2006 01:07:07 PM CDT