The magic bookshelf

I wish I still had it. It was in my room as long as I can remember -- a positively enormous bookcase (especially from the perspective of 6), it was a good six feet tall, almost five wide, painted a robin's egg blue. (Actually I have a vague memory of a time when it was brown, but I'm not sure how accurate that is...) Forget C.S. Lewis's wardrobe (although that and many other marvels were contained in its shelves) -- my bookcase took me to Narnia, Prydain, ancient Greece, Persia, Middle Earth, the Middle Ages, down rabbit holes and under mountains. For starters.

For a basically outgoing kid, I spent an enormous percentage of my life with a book in my hands. Even now, crawling inside a book is still one of my absolute favorite activities. Forget TV. Movies? Wellll, okay, there's some I love almost as much as my favorite books. But even now I just have to close my eyes and...

Prydain. The Chronicles of Prydain. Taran and Eilonwy and Gurgi -- who remembers Gurgi? And of course the oracular pig, Hen Wen. They were for me what I think the Harry Potter books are proving to be for a lot of kids now -- my first introduction to epic fantasy. And the lessons are very much the same-- responsibility. Self-reliance. Learning to make your own choices and abide by the consequences -- okay, Harry's had it rather easy on the score as opposed to Taran. Interestingly enough, they both were orphans.

I can definitely say that Lloyd Alexander permanently stamped the outlines of what I think a great story is somewhere very deep in my mind. And that bookshelf, that wonderful, magical bookshelf, gave me such a breadth of worlds to travel.

Y'know, come to think of it, what else could my mom have possibly expected me to grow up into, putting a big blue beastie like that in my room? :-)

Thanks, Mom.

-- Sierra

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