nobody ever called them that but that's what they were - chapter books. books with chapters. they meant you were growing up.
they meant the print wasn't gigantic anymore and the storylines were more complex. you didn't just have to sit there and watch tom run and then watch betty run (we didn't have dick and jane where i went to school - we were hip - we had tom and betty - courtesy of "ginn basic reader's "on cherry street" series). more hip, maybe, but just as boring......after reading first about tom running and then about betty running, we then had to read about tom and betty running.
and to think they were trying to inspire 6-year olds to want to read.......
but once you got to second grade, they let you read chapter books. except they didn't call them that. they just called them "books." and they suddenly opened up a whole bigger world than watching tom run. run, tom, run.
i remember the library at my elementary school and how, starting in second grade, you got to go once a week. my library had a bunch of biographies about the people from colonial america, especially the ones who founded this country, and i read every single one of them. i can sit here now and remember the exact shade of blue that each of those books was bound in. i remember the square size of them - about 5" by 5" - and especially how old they all smelled. like somebody's grandma's kitchen. the corners of the pages were worn or folded over, as every good book should be, and you could look in the front flap, find the library loan card, and see the names of every kid before you who had read that very same book. or at least checked it out. it was like a history lesson of its own, right there.
i was reading chapter books. and i didn't even know it.
when i got a little older, i read all kinds of books,including every single nancy drew book. i read most of them twice, several of them 3 times. "the secret of the old clock," which was the very first one in the series, was and still is my favorite. i remember that book like it was the cookbook i just used last night.
eventually i got to high school and that's when reading became a problem, not a joy. whereas i used to stay up way past my bedtime with a flashlight under the covers, suddenly, when i had to read a book......and i had to analyze it......discuss the characters, the setting, the theme.....and take one entire test on it, well......suddenly i loathed books.
and to think they were trying to inspire 16-year olds to want to read.
college just made it worse and graduate school about did me in. frankly, it's a testimony to my something-or-other that i even went to graduate school. considering how much i hated books by that time.
and then, finally......real life started to happen. and books, no longer a requirement, became fun again. i read everything i could get my hands on - in between diapers and parent-teacher conferences and high school musicals and graduations, that is. which probably means i read about 5 books. but it felt like everything i could get my hands on.
my taste in books as an adult has changed over the years. i guess everything has changed over the years. but not my love of chapter books. and not my love of chapters.
a new one has my name written all over it. the characters are a boy and a girl and the setting is georgia. the theme is love and the girl needs to get there quick.
run, nancy.
run.
