by Kelly Pickerill
I don’t really ever work in Oz but Kaycie’s blogs about children’s books have me reminiscing about the books I loved as a child.
When I was little my dad took me to the library every weekend, and he remembers “graduating” me from picture to chapter books with The Mystery of the Green Cat by Phyllis Whitney, a book he read as a child.
I think I must have liked it; I don’t really remember the story or anything, but I was at least convinced that I was ready for more meaty reading fare because I went back to that section to find another chapter book. I picked Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, and loved that so much that I think I must have checked it out several more times that year. I remember that story well; as an adult I now own a copy and recently reread it.
One Christmas I unwrapped boxed sets of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries and plowed through them, thrilled that they belonged to me and could be read again and again. My dad continues to be an avid mystery reader, and because of his influence I
enjoy them as well. From mysteries like The Green Cat and Hardy Boys I graduated to Agatha Christie and Shirley Jackson. Now, along with the rest of the world, I’ve been on the Swedish mystery kick, enjoying Larsson’s Girl books and, most recently, The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler.
But I really love to read all genres of fiction, a preference which I believe is directly related to the variety of books I devoured as a child. From the word play of The Phantom Tollbooth and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, I grew up to love books like Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn and Adverbs by Daniel Handler.
Being immersed in the fantasy worlds of The Neverending Story, The Hobbit, and The Chronicles of Narnia drew me to Neil Gaiman, and I think even my adoration for surrealist novelists like Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell comes from this influence.
When I was young I read Little Women and The Secret Garden, more “straight” novels, and as an adult I love the novels of authors like John Irving and Jeffrey Eugenides.
As a youngster the library’s amount of books was overwhelming. I know ours was a rather small library in a rather small town but to me it looked like this:
The first time I set foot in Lemuria I thought the same thing; we do have an incredible amount of titles, considering our space. I’ve overheard kids tell their moms as they walk through Oz, which is really the smallest space in the store, that there are more books there than they’ve seen anywhere. “Books and books and books and books,” one little girl happily sang. It’s really a store unto itself, where readers of any age can find something to nurture their love of books.
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