I love having tactful friends. Yes, I'm "just a titch" over 34. :-) The author, Francis Spufford, is counting from the time he first read a real book--at age 6, when he was home in bed for a month with the mumps, and made his way through The Hobbit--haltingly at first, fluently by the end, although he admits that there were many words he did not understand then. Still, he got the gist of the story.
I was counting from the same event--my first real "book", not a picture book. I began reading so young that I cannot remember before I could read . . . but for some time I read captions, cereal boxes, picture books--I have a vague memory of some book of poetry with a poem in it about tying shoes and the last line was "because my thumbs get in the way." But my first "real" book was the fall I turned five, and it was The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My mother knew I could read, had been encouraging me to read picture books, and somehow acquired The Long Winter--the lovely yellow-covered version with the Garth Williams cover (any other kind ought to be illegal!) She told me how much she had loved these books, and set it on a shelf for "when I was older" I stared at that book, crept up and caressed it, looked longingly at the cover . . . but it was awfully thick, with so many small-printed words in it! Finally one day I worked up the courage to crack open the cover and see just how hard it was to read words when there were sooo many on each page . . . and found it not really that hard at all. I'm sure, in retrospect, it took me a very long time to finish that book--weeks or months, probably. But in my memory it seems like a single day--one day I knew only Dr. Seuss, nonsense and picture books, and the next, suddenly, a book had opened for me, like Pandora's box, and let out mysteries I had never imagined---whole real people, with problems and thoughts and clothes and hair. Who knew all that had been in that book? How did it all get in, and why was I suddenly privy to the magic to let them out? My world was never again the same. It seems to me as though my world, like Dorothy's, was instantly colorized, changed from rather drab Kansas to brilliant and vivid Oz with a mere swoop of print. Astonishing!
So one momentous day, my fifth birthday, my mother took me to the library and got me my own card. The token of the secret membership which would let me go anywhere, anytime! I proudly carried home two other Little House books, and Indian Captive by Lois Lenski. I remember them still, it's another crystal moment. I became insatiable; why was it that with all those marvelous books, anyone ever wanted to do anything else? I still find that puzzling. :-) I became greedy--I wanted them for myself. This was largely unrealized in my childhood; most of my books came from the library, and I had a precious few of my own. But no princess ever treasured her jewels and silks and satins more! I eventually ended up with the WHOLE beautiful yellow-covered set of Little House books (sixth birthday present, wish I still had them!) and an odd assortment of other things, with an honorable mention to my lavender-covered bookclub Nancy Drews, two stories to a volume. :-) I hoarded them with miserly drive.
This is surely why The Child That Books Built is resonating with me; the author has different memories, but still of the same order. His description of how The Hobbit released its dragon is the counterpart of Laura suddenly appearing in my little mobile home. Tomorrow I will try to include some interesting tidbits from the book I also identify with--like all those words we learn first in books, when we know neither their exact meaning nor their accepted pronunciation, but they nevertheless are as real as the other words. Lovely!