From: Kathy Johnson <kmquimby>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:07:16 -0400

I second Claudia's experience of reading, although I would add Ramona Quimby to the mix of characters I liked. She is also the one I came closest to seeing as myself, not because we shared a last name
(although that is what started me reading the book), but because she, too, is puzzled by the world and doesn't always quite get things. Even as she made me laugh because "guts" was A Bad Word, I knew how Ramona felt when people laughed at her.

I'm wondering if children feel they are different because of the norm they experience in books (and on TV and in other media), or if they turn to books because they feel different from the kids around them and the characters in books may be different, but at least they are safely between the covers, where they can be encountered by choice.

This has certainly been a fascinating discussion!

Kathy Q.

At 12:17 PM 7/22/2009, Claudia Pearson wrote:
> > Do others remember having this sort of communal childhood
> > consciousness--a sense of being not just you and young but actually
> > something you understood as childlike in specific ways you assumed
> > were shared by other children? For me, that possibility suggests a
> > level of acculturation in individual children into a specific cultural
> > idea of childhood that I would never have suspected. Children who
> > believe they are childlike in the ways adults understand what
> > childhood is--fascinating.
> >
> > Perry
>
>I did not sense being a member of a communal childhood consciousness. In
>fact, I always felt I was different from most children. One of the things
>on which this sense was based was that I was always reading and was
>fascinated with words and with books. I read everything, every biography I
>could find, Bobsey Twins and Little House and Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys,
>Shakespere and Kahil Gilbran, The Count of Monte Christo and The Scarlet
>Pimpernil, Great Expectations and Huck Finn, Pompei and Hiroshima. I
>remember reading many things that I can not now say why I read, I can't
>recall what I found fascinating about the stories or series that led me to
>read them all. It was like I consumed them, had an insatiable appetite for
>books.
>
>In some ways it seems as though I was claiming and possessing the books,
>not connecting with the characters or feeling that the author was talking
>to me specifically. I never found a character like me any any book I ever
>read, although I did like Jo and Harriet.
>
>Maybe I thought of myself as unusual because I identified with these
>"unusual" characters more closely than other children portrayed in these
>books, but I don't think so, because almost all books are stories about
>unusual characters, especially girl characters, who eventually find their
>place and purpose. I hated it when Jo got married.
>
>Maybe I thought of myself as different because I did not fit the patterns I
>observed in the books I read. I don't know. Perhaps most children feel they
>are "different" from the norm like I did. Perhaps this sense is generated
>by the idea books convey, that most children are childlike in specific
>universal ways.
>
>Claudi
>
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Received on Wed 22 Jul 2009 01:07:16 PM CDT