From Library to Library.

You know, google is a wonderful thing. There I was, wasting  time because I just couldn't seem to get motivated to do what needs to be done, & googling my old primary school. Who knows why?  I never particularly liked it but you know, school...everybody went. Some people liked it.  Some of us endured it as one of those inexplicable things adults made you do & some tried to escape.


It has always been a big school but almost the only thing I remember with any clarity is the library. I don't remember too many of my classmates & fewer yet of the teachers but I do remember the library ~ & the librarian, one Mrs Lowden who insisted I read books in their proper order & refused, point blank, to issue me Heidi's Children until I had read Heidi & Heidi Grows Up.  She issued them in order & I dutifully took them home, returning them in due course unread.  I only wanted to read Heidi's Children ~ then worked my way backwards. Reading, like history, reminds me of jigsaws.  It never matters what order you get your information in, it slots into its allotted place without effort.

I loved that library.  For its time & place it was very, very well stocked & I can probably trace my love of the exotic to the vagaries of the *Twins Series* ~ not the Bobbsy Twins, though there were plenty of those too, but The Twins of Lapland or Iceland, Russia, Australia, Mexico etc. Along with these were lovely colour photo books of children who lived in different countries & had exotic, unfamiliar names like Gunnar, Jansci, Annushka... *sigh*... & they lived in places where it actually snowed!  I was enchanted with visions of fairytale trees trimmed with icicles.  I learnt the reality is very different & the enchantment faded with the cold.

There were too all the Billabong books my mother didn't own. These were given as school prizes & my mother worked hard at school to earn each new story because books just weren't in her house growing up.  I have her old ones on my shelves now along with her Dimsie school stories. The Billabong books have lasted well, despite some modern naysayers complaining about sexism, racism & a whole lot of other isms, mostly because they are hilarious & Norah & Wally's wedding Day excursion on the billabong is still one of the funniest things I have ever read!

Further along the fiction  shelves were the Sadler Wells books by Lorna Hill & though I read a fair few of them & my fair share of Pony Stories my favourite by far was They Called Her Patience. I think I loved it for it's sense of place as much as for the lovely characterisations.  I have always responded strongly to books with a strong sense of place. 

However it wasn't until I got sick ~ measles, mumps, chicken pox~ with one of those noxious childhood illnesses we all used to get once upon a time, that I discovered there was such a thing as a municipal library ~ & we had one! My mother, no doubt driven crazy by a very bored & unwell child, got me a library card & brought home a choice selection of what she hoped would entertain me for the weary hours of recovery. I took one look & wept, bitterly disappointed.

My mother has always been a realist ~ & her choice of reading material sadly reflected this fact. While I read widely & vociferously my preference was for fantasy & nary a fantasy book was there to be had. However, I now had a library card & library cards are meant to be used & I had every intention my library card would be very well used indeed!

It was in the local library I found the books I loved best & that have stayed with me into adulthood.  I also learnt the old adage, Don't judge a book by it's cover, is not true ~ at least when it comes to children's books.  The cover gives a good idea of the illustrations within & anyone who has had the joy of Kate Seredy's beautiful black & white illustrations knows that they are at least half the pleasure of the story & so exquisite one can stare forever. The Good Master was the first of these I loved, then owned. I loved the Hungary Seredy had known & mourned as history revealed the horrors of communism ~ which Seredy never dealt with though she did the war.

It was on the Municipal Library shelves I first discovered Marguerite D'Angeli: Thee Hannah ~ which I now own & still love & which speaks so deeply to me of the meaning of difference; Henner's Lydia, the first time I learnt about the Amish & was so intrigued I researched everything I could about them [I developed excellent research skills for a child my age thanks to this book! ☺] & Elin's Amerika ~ a hidden history of *New Sweden* & America.  I learnt a good deal about other people's customs from all these.

As I grew older my 2 favourite authors were both English: Elfrida Vipont & Antonia Forest. Vipont & Forest both had an excellent sense of place but Forest is much the better writer.  Her characters, even her minor characters, are always 3 dimensional.  They are people you feel you know & would recognise if you bumped into them at the shops. However Vipont wrote about a Quaker family & after Thee Hannah anything remotely Quakerish had my undivided attention.

At this point I should have moved fairly smoothly into adult fiction & become immersed in the classics but it never happened. What happened instead is my obsession with fantasy bore unexpected fruit. I, who had never read a non~fiction book in my life & considered facts very dull things indeed, discovered that archaeology could be found on my library shelves. From that point on my heart belonged to Arthur's Pre~Christian Celtic Britain!