I don’t know if you know this, but the Peabody Library has the best Pages around; a by Pages, I mean the young people who re-shelve books, help with gathering requests, generally do the daily tasks that keep the Library running smoothly…not the paper pages.  Though we have a lot of paper pages, and many of them are delightful, too…

…But anyways…the other day, I got into a conversation with one of our Terrific Pages about the books that made us into readers in our childhood.  It turns out that I was not the only one who was (is) addicted to the Choose Your Own Adventure Series!  And fifteen minutes later, I found three said CYOA books waiting for me, having been snuck up from the Children’s Room by said Terrific Page.  And my day, nay, my week was made.

But that conversation got me thinking about those books that made me a reader as a child.  Not just the books I enjoyed, or remember fondly, but those reading experiences that I am still trying to replicate to this day.  Those books that continue to shape my thinking, my reading tastes, my world view…That might be a little exaggerated, but not by much, to be honest.

I don’t know if I’d necessarily want to read all of these books again.  Some of them I didn’t actually enjoy, as I’ll explain below.  Some of them, I know, meant something to me at the time because of some particular Life Thing I was experiencing, and picking them up now, when that Life Thing is over, may actually be a bit of a dream-killer.  The best of this list, however, are the books I have read again as an adult, and loved just as much, though perhaps for different reasons.

So here, in case you were interested, are some of the books that made Younger Me into the reader I am today.  What are yours?

The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye: For the record, my copy of this book had a much more purple cover, and one that looked much less like a story from the Brothers’ Grimm.  But regardless of the cover, this book was my go-to from fourth through sixth grade.  I think I read it five times during those years, and loved it every time.  At her christening, along Wit, Charm, Health, and Courage, Princess Amy of Phantasmorania receives a special fairy christening gift: Ordinariness She is the “plain” one in her family of beauties, the clumsy one in a family of grace and elegance, the one who is unsure of herself in a family that has inherited self-confidence.  But rather than wallow, our heroine heads off on her own, getting a job as a kitchen maid at a neighboring palace, and finding a prince who is just as “ordinary” and unique as she, and who loves her precisely as she is.  I loved the humor in this book, especially the gentle satire regarding Amy’s elitist family, and Amy’s resourcefulness.  This is a book that isn’t meant to make “ordinary” readers feel better.  Instead, it’s a rally-cry to embrace everything about yourself that makes you you, and to demand happiness on your own terms.  And that’s a message we all need to hear, no matter how old we get.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar: I developed a taste for Weird Fiction from a very young age, and I blame it all on Louis Sachar.  Wayside School is a building that should have been built on one story, with the classrooms all next to each other; instead, it was built with one classroom on top of another.  Each story in this book, and its sequel, Wayside School is Falling Down, focus on the students in the classroom on the thirtieth floor.  These stories have their messages–asserting that everyone learns a little differently and that’s ok, that bullying isn’t cool, etc.,–but they are also genuinely bizarre, in that way that the best children’s stories should be.  What I specifically remember is the section of the book that deals with The Thirteenth Floor.  Like many buildings, Wayside School doesn’t have a thirteenth floor (this book was the way I learned that)…but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a thirteenth floor.  Those chapters freaked me out to no end when I was seven, and, after re-reading these stories, they still do.  The same unsettling uncertainty that makes Poe’s or Stoker’s stories so chilling is present in spades in Sachar’s stories, and I was hooked from a young age.  Apparently, there are more Wayside School books now, you lucky readers!

High Trail to Danger by Joan Lowry Nixon: I think I’ve mentioned this book before at some point.  I’m going to discuss it again because it nearly destroyed my life, and extinguished all happiness from my soul.  When seventeen-year old Sarah’s father is killed in the mining town of Leadville Colorado, she decides to travel west to clear his name.  But her search lands her in more danger than she ever imagined.  I lived for this book, and for its sequel, A Deadly Promise.  I loved the historic details of Leadville (which was a real place, and just as dangerous and wild a place as Nixon describes), I loved Sarah’s determination and fearlessness.  But I did not love the love triangle that developed between Sarah and the two gentlemen she encountered on her quest.  Because she chose the wrong man.  And then I threw the book across the room and didn’t talk to anyone for two days (this is absolutely true).  I abhor love triangles to this day, for any number of adult, feminist, and literary reasons, but they all stem from my inability to recover from this first, total, heartbreak.

So what do you think?  Would you want to re-read your beloved books today?  If not, how about sharing them with a Younger Person in your life, and get their life as a reader started?