My big sisters took my education very seriously. They made sure I could identify every single Beatles song, taught me the proper way to talk mom and dad into keeping a stray pet, and kept my shelves full of really good books.
Brunswick resident Heather D. Martin wants to know what’s on your mind; email her at heather@heatherdmartin.com.
I was a fortunate child. What’s more, although I certainly had the staples of childhood reading (to this day “A Wrinkle in Time” makes me smile), they never felt bound by age suggestions. For which I am grateful.
I was 12 when my big sister handed me my first Kurt Vonnegut, “Bluebeard.” It changed my life. I remember very clearly thinking, “I didn’t know you could do this with words!” I had been taught that there were rules to writing, things you could and could not do. Vonnegut broke them all, seemingly without much concern or regard. Reading that book was like watching people just up and decide gravity no longer applied to them and that was just the new way the world works.
The downside of finding a book like that is that it sets the bar pretty darned high. Sure, sure, there are loads of other authors I like, a few I even adore. I read pretty much anything and everything I can get my hands on, and there are many books I have enjoyed, but nothing had that sense of upending the fundamental way words work.
Until now.
A perk of my job is “having” to read a slew of new books – twist my arm – and one of those that made it into my take-home stack recently is “Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks” by Jason Reynolds.
Holy cow, I didn’t know you could do that with words!
The stories that unfold along those 10 city blocks are captivating. His book is filled with beautiful characters living extraordinarily beautiful ordinary lives. There are difficult moments; there are painful events. There is a lot of reality offered up in words that are magic. He breaks all the rules, seemingly with sheer glee. Never have I fallen so utterly in love with a group of fictional children as the ones who dwell in his book.
In an utterly different fashion, but with a similar feeling of revelation, I recently read “This Was Our Pact.” A strange, reality-distorting and hauntingly beautiful graphic novel by Ryan Andrews done in Japanese-style artwork, this book is so lovely, so evocative, so utterly embracing of the whimsy (and nightmares) of childhood it is breathtaking. It mixes reality and fantasy in ways that make fantasy seem real.
At the same time, there is a new series of books being launched by mega-star author Rick Riordan. Buoyed by the success of his Percy Jackson series, Riordan formed his own imprint to publish myth-based adventure books from other cultures, written by authors from those cultures. They are fun, engaging and offer heroes with whom a multitude of kids can identify.
A good book transports and welcomes the reader into an alternate world. It presents other cultures, or a beautiful light on their own. It offers them new possibilities. Books have the power to be an ally, to be a lifeline, to be the path to a better, richer future. I am forever grateful to the presence of good books in this world.
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