Loving Pinocchio, loving books

I know. It’s a month until New Year’s Day, but for me—well, today feels like New Year’s Day because I’m starting a new adventure, here with you, blogging about one of my favorite subjects in the world—Books.

You may be surprised to see a new name here. So am I! I’ve enjoyed my good friend Susan Ideus’s blog in this spot since she began. Now, Susan’s life is going in another direction, and while she is continuing as an editor at Story Circle Book Reviews and will (I trust) continue to review, she is relinquishing this blog to me.

Think I’m a little bit nervous? You’ve got it! I’ve been an intermittent blogger for years. (You can check me out at http://trillap.blogspot.com/. Well I know that keeping a blog is like the little girls in the schoolyard playing jump rope. “Ice cream soda/Delaware Punch/tell me the ‘nitials of your honeybunch!” That rope keeps coming around and the blogger has to hop and she has to keep the rhythm. Susan is a master (or should I say mistress?) at keeping that rhythm and sometimes doing some of the twirls and tricks that showcase the true expert. That’s a hard rope to jump; I’m hoping to be up to the challenge and hop on to this site a couple of times or so a month to take a twirl at talking about one of my favorite (if not favorite) subjects—books!

I was born loving books. Our tiny house on Kentucky Streetin Amarillowas full of them. Both of my parents wrote professionally, and, like many writers, when they weren’t writing they were reading. I loved holding the book, listening to my dad read to me every night after supper while my sister practiced the piano. My sister read Bambi to me so many times that for a little while my folks thought I could read—I’d memorized it.

But read I could not. Not in the first grade, nor the second. The teachers despaired and kept me after school to “try a little harder.” My parents couldn’t understand. They knew I was bright, but I surely couldn’t read. Today, I’d be getting help. Then I got shaking heads.

Finally, when I was in the third grade, a breakthrough. I was spending the night with my dear grandmother, Mom Beeman. As usual just before bedtime she read to me. This time Pinocchio, from the very book that had been Mother’s when she was a little girl. Mom B. came to the exciting part where the nose begins to grow and grow, and then she lay down the book.

“Time for my bath, and I need to call your Uncle Jack.”

“Finish the chapter. Please!” I begged. I couldn’t wait ‘til tomorrow.

“Plenty of time tomorrow, or let’s see, we may eat out tomorrow, maybe the next day.” She headed down the hall for her bath leaving the book wide open on the couch beside me.

I looked at those dancing letters that didn’t make any sense. I picked up the book. Suddenly, the letters fell into a pattern. I quit seeing letters, I saw Pinocchio. I was, for the first time in my life lost in a book.

 Trilla just about the time she finally learned to read.

When she came back in her quilted bathrobe, smelling of lavender, she took the book I was still holding in my lap. “If you get up early enough, you’ll have time to read a chapter before school.” She laid it on the table at my place. Thanks, Mom Beeman, you changed my life. You saved my live.

Sometimes today people ask me why I read so much. I have books in every room. Books open face under the bed and in the car. Now they’re in my smart phone. Not enough books! I suspect I’m still trying to catch up on those three years I couldn’t read when everyone else could. What did I miss? Read, read, read; maybe I’ll find it! It’s my quest.

And I’m glad to have you along on the trip of exploring the world of books.