My Book House

Books for children?
There weren't many in Gladstone in the fifties.
I learned to read, age 6, with Dick and Jane, little sister Sally and Spot the dog. Other than those names, the most memorable part of the experience was the half-circle of 6-yr-old-size little red chairs for the reading lesson. I liked those chairs. Dick and Jane left me fairly cold.

My reading life began in second grade.
 I had a library book - which means Mama must have taken me to the Gladstone School and Public library (not big) - about Indians of different tribes. It was la big book, mostly text, each chapter describing  how tribes lived in different places in the continent by means of a little story about a child. I loved the stories but most of all I loved the single big colour picture that went with each chapter. To me it seemed immensely detailed and brightly beautiful. The Mesa Verde cliff dwellings I could enter, climbing up the narrow pole ladders. The immensely tall and dark evergreens of the North West took me far from home. At that age, I didn't really realise that Gladstone was largely surrounded by similar trees (but shorter).

That book took me right away from home, I couldn't get enough of it. And so I learned that any book could do that for me.

But - any book? There weren't many.   The library was there, and used, but pretty limited. Bookstores?  Non-existent.  Someone else had been thinking of this, how to get enough books to children in isolated towns across the continent. And my loving mother had invested probably quite a bit of money in My Book House.

Here is a golden memory: it's a grey winter day, snow is deep but I'm in the house at a loose end. Mama goes into the utility room at the back of the kitchen. This room is unheated and functions as a freezer all winter. She comes out with a  brand new book for me! The book is large, dark blue, with a color picture on the front cover.  It's freezing cold!  We go into the living room and she shows me how to open a book for the first time, gently opening out the cover and the pages in  several places. Frozen air comes out of the pages, and also enchantment.

There are color pictures on every page, and stories galore. It's a book to read and keep forever. And over the next few years, a new book will appear from time to time,  each book a little step up from the last. Finally My Book House is complete in twelve volumes, making a handsome row of dark blue spines with gold lettering, what a treasure to me.