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[CCBC-Net] Life-changing books
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From: Vicki Cobb <vicki.cobb2>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 14:20:33 -0400
My father started reading The Secret Garden to me when I was eight. I was so terrified that Mary would get into trouble for trespassing that I made him stop. I decided, when I was ten, that I must face my fears and I read that book on my own. I learned about having courage from that experience. Many years later, when I was a judge for the Golden Kite Award, a newly illustrated version of The Secret Garden arrived at my doorstep. I had just returned from a visit to Yorkshire. I was amazed, as I reread the book, how muchYorkshire dialect was in the text. It had made no impression on me as a child, I was so consumed by the story.
I think we underestimate the intellectual powers of children and their ability to accept as given a world foreign to their own. Vicki Cobb
----- Original Message ----- From: <balkinbuddies at aol.com> To: <ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu> Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:03 PM Subject: [CCBC-Net] Life-changing books
> 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. S
> o 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-net
> _______________________________________________
> 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-net
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.7.0/346 - Release Date: 5/23/2006
>
>
Received on Wed 24 May 2006 01:20:33 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 14:20:33 -0400
My father started reading The Secret Garden to me when I was eight. I was so terrified that Mary would get into trouble for trespassing that I made him stop. I decided, when I was ten, that I must face my fears and I read that book on my own. I learned about having courage from that experience. Many years later, when I was a judge for the Golden Kite Award, a newly illustrated version of The Secret Garden arrived at my doorstep. I had just returned from a visit to Yorkshire. I was amazed, as I reread the book, how muchYorkshire dialect was in the text. It had made no impression on me as a child, I was so consumed by the story.
I think we underestimate the intellectual powers of children and their ability to accept as given a world foreign to their own. Vicki Cobb
----- Original Message ----- From: <balkinbuddies at aol.com> To: <ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu> Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:03 PM Subject: [CCBC-Net] Life-changing books
> 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. S
> o 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-net
> _______________________________________________
> 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-net
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.7.0/346 - Release Date: 5/23/2006
>
>
Received on Wed 24 May 2006 01:20:33 PM CDT
