As a toddler, I listened to Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, nonsense verses, and the stories Dad made up as he lay beside me for a while at bedtime, legs crossed, one arm across his eyes, spinning them out as they occurred to him.
Mom and Dad were avid readers. I still own their first editions of The Robe, Quo Vadis, The Harvester by Gene Stratton Porter, and A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich (another book about a girl who grows up to be a writer). They had books in the house for themselves after they tucked us in at night in those softly quiet evenings before television. In their wartime correspondence, they wrote about books and movies, along with shortages, and their yearning for each other. Dad, of course, saw more movies on base or shipboard, than Mom.
Although Little Jack Horner sat in a corner eating his Christmas pie and Jack and Jill went up that hill before I knew I had a memory, the first book that I know shaped my love of literature was Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. I read it while recovering from some minor second grade illness. Mom and Dad shone with pride, but all I cared about was the magical story: Tom canoodling Joe Harper to whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence; the awkward puppy love Tom felt for Becky Thatcher; the weird idea of swinging a dead cat, or visitng a graveyard at night; and, the terror of being stalked in the cave by Injun Joe. Too soon for feminist awareness, I applauded Tom’s protective stalwartness where Becky was concerned.
It kept me turning the pages and picturing the world Twain created. Images abounded in my stuffed up little head. It marked an early experience, and an addictive one, that of being both lost and at home, all at once, in somebody else’s world.
Huckleberry Finn followed in short order, as books by favorite authors often do. The second Twain book, the grand adventure on the Mississippi, took me captive as I absorbed, through a story, a character’s growth. That growth, of course, contributed to my own as a young, but thinking, human being.
And that, along with the entertainment factor, is probably the thing that hooked me once and forever on reading. I slipped into the skin of a mischievous orphan boy who shone naughty, remorseful, brave, and resourceful in 1839-40 Missouri. I knew what it would be like because I’d been there. I understood Jim’s desperation, his sore need to be free. I didn’t quite understand Huck’s dilemma in whether to help Jim, but that would come through the generous words of others.