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Want to know what I did this morning? I gathered up all the children’s books I keep strewn around my living room, a part of the decorative scheme, and dumped them in a box for my friend Di. Her Sylvie is coming to visit—her funny, wispy, blue-eyed, book-loving three-year-old granddaughter Sylvie.
The first book I ever bought with my own money was The Illustrated Treasury of Children’s Literature at Lauriat’s bookstore in downtown Boston. It was a tome filled with poetry and short stories. I saved for a year to buy it, and when I turned 8 years old, my grandmother’s birthday dollar put the pile of dimes and nickels, a few quarters, over the top.
I still buy children’s books.
You’d think that I wouldn’t have an overwhelming desire to even own books, given that I live beside a large, active library. Actually, when I wake each morning, I can look out onto its seasoned granite blocks, onto its copper dome. I can see into its belly when the lights are on.
But I think the library makes me want to own books even more. I am so sad when I must return a book I love. I’m not even good at returning magazines. If confidentiality weren’t an issue, all you’d have to do is check with any clerk at the Bangor Public Library and you’d know that I have never returned a magazine on time.
If I’m honest, it’s not just the stories, the ideas, the power to transform that makes me so attached to these words bound between two covers, but also the concreteness of a book.
I love the way books feel in my hands. I love the paper, both the thin, cheap, mass market kind and the thick, hand-pressed kind. I love the smell of old pages, of new print. I love knowing that when, at 3 a.m. on a frigid Tuesday night like this one, the frost crawling on the inside of my leaky window, something in me misses my mother, I can pick up Katherine Arnoldi’s All Things Are Labor and know: “My mother in one second gave me everything on earth.”
And this box of books for Sylvie? I’m so happy to do this. I’m convinced that if every child in this country were read to every day, we would be a better country. If we read to babies and toddlers, to middle school kids, to our adult friends (the truth is I still sometimes read to my adult children), we could set the world ablaze with something way beyond knowledge, understanding, tolerance. We could really be human.
And so for years now I have given new babies whatever my favorite book of the time is—The Jones Family Express, Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, The Sound of Color, How to Be a Good Dog—plus a pair of hand-knit booties and a small bowl. To me all of these gifts together—the book, the booties, the bowl—say: 1) The world is yours, all of it; 2) Make the walk leaving a soft mark, don’t hurt what you have been entrusted with; 3) The circle of your family is your source, your love bowl, honor the good in it.
It feels like I am giving them a blueprint for the story of their very good life. I am not saying it will be easy or pain-free; mine has not been, for sure, but it is, indeed, a very good life, and that very good life is filled with books.
Annaliese Jakimides’ poetry, essays, and fiction continue to appear in a variety of print, audio, and performance venues, including the recently released short story collection The Long Meanwhile, edited by Molly McQuade.
The first book I ever bought with my own money was The Illustrated Treasury of Children’s Literature at Lauriat’s bookstore in downtown Boston. It was a tome filled with poetry and short stories. I saved for a year to buy it, and when I turned 8 years old, my grandmother’s birthday dollar put the pile of dimes and nickels, a few quarters, over the top.
I still buy children’s books.
You’d think that I wouldn’t have an overwhelming desire to even own books, given that I live beside a large, active library. Actually, when I wake each morning, I can look out onto its seasoned granite blocks, onto its copper dome. I can see into its belly when the lights are on.
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But I think the library makes me want to own books even more. I am so sad when I must return a book I love. I’m not even good at returning magazines. If confidentiality weren’t an issue, all you’d have to do is check with any clerk at the Bangor Public Library and you’d know that I have never returned a magazine on time.
If I’m honest, it’s not just the stories, the ideas, the power to transform that makes me so attached to these words bound between two covers, but also the concreteness of a book.
I love the way books feel in my hands. I love the paper, both the thin, cheap, mass market kind and the thick, hand-pressed kind. I love the smell of old pages, of new print. I love knowing that when, at 3 a.m. on a frigid Tuesday night like this one, the frost crawling on the inside of my leaky window, something in me misses my mother, I can pick up Katherine Arnoldi’s All Things Are Labor and know: “My mother in one second gave me everything on earth.”
And this box of books for Sylvie? I’m so happy to do this. I’m convinced that if every child in this country were read to every day, we would be a better country. If we read to babies and toddlers, to middle school kids, to our adult friends (the truth is I still sometimes read to my adult children), we could set the world ablaze with something way beyond knowledge, understanding, tolerance. We could really be human.
And so for years now I have given new babies whatever my favorite book of the time is—The Jones Family Express, Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, The Sound of Color, How to Be a Good Dog—plus a pair of hand-knit booties and a small bowl. To me all of these gifts together—the book, the booties, the bowl—say: 1) The world is yours, all of it; 2) Make the walk leaving a soft mark, don’t hurt what you have been entrusted with; 3) The circle of your family is your source, your love bowl, honor the good in it.
It feels like I am giving them a blueprint for the story of their very good life. I am not saying it will be easy or pain-free; mine has not been, for sure, but it is, indeed, a very good life, and that very good life is filled with books.
Annaliese Jakimides’ poetry, essays, and fiction continue to appear in a variety of print, audio, and performance venues, including the recently released short story collection The Long Meanwhile, edited by Molly McQuade.
