End of the Reading Rainbow

I wanted to post this poem yesterday, but the Stevenson poem seemed more appropriate for that entry.  While we're still on the subject of reading (we are until I say we're not), I'm going to include it.  I always find joy in stories about the lengths people will go to to learn to read.

Learning to Read

-Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Very soon the Yankee teachers
Came down and set up school;
But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,—
It was agin' their rule.

Our masters always tried to hide
Book learning from our eyes;
Knowledge didn't agree with slavery—
'Twould make us all too wise.

But some of us would try to steal
A little from the book,
And put the words together,
And learn by hook or crook.

I remember Uncle Caldwell,
Who took pot-liquor fat
And greased the pages of his book,
And hid it in his hat.

And had his master ever seen
The leaves up on his head,
He'd have thought them greasy papers,
But nothing to be read.

And there was Mr. Turner's Ben,
Who heard the children spell,
And picked the words right up by heart,
And learned to read 'em well.

Well, the Northern folks kept sending
The Yankee teachers down;
And they stood right up and helped us,
Though Rebs did sneer and frown.

And, I longed to read my Bible,
For precious words it said;
But when I begun to learn it,
Folks just shook their heads,

And said there is no use trying,
Oh! Chloe, you're too late;
But as I was rising sixty,
I had no time to wait.

So I got a pair of glasses,
And straight to work I went,
And never stopped till I could read
The hymns and Testament.

Then I got a little cabin—
A place to call my own—
And I felt as independent
As the queen upon her throne.

If Black Books and Inkheart had a baby, it would be this post.

Sometimes when my mind wanders I like to imagine that I run a little used and antique bookstore somewhere around Stratford-upon-Avon.  Hardly anyone would come in to buy things, and the sun would stream through the high windows.  I would sit there reading all day, only to glance up once or twice at the dust settling in the beams.

It occurs to me that many of the best gifts I have ever been given have been books.  For Christmas this year, my family all drew names and then made a pact to only give one homemade gift to that person.  It turned out to be a really special Christmas.  I unwrapped a cookbook created by my mother.  It was hardback like a real book, with a photo of her kitchen on the cover and a picture of us together on the back.  She took some pictures and used others that I had taken and posted online and then typed up some of her best recipes.  It is one of my favorite things ever.

The Christmas before that, my best friend gave me the most unexpected and exciting book I could have ever imagined.  It's A Child's Garden of Verses written by Robert Louis Stevenson, and there's a sticker inside the cover with a 1929 calendar on it.  It's got that musty smell that the farthest reaches of the library stacks have, and sometimes I feel like Mary Katherine Gallagher sitting there and smelling the pages like a fool.

Runners-up in the best books I have been given category are Are You Being Served?: The Inside Story of Britain's Funniest--And Public Television's Favorite--Comedy Series, Catch-22 (loaned to me by a friend and then later given to me by my dad), and The Making of Pride and Prejudice (the BBC version because I am a die-hard nerd).

Here is a poem included in that collection of Stevenson verses.  Do you ever wish you could just live in the pages of a book?

The Land of Storybooks

At evening when the lamp is lit,
Around the fire my parents sit;
They sit at home and talk and sing,
And do not play at anything.

Now, with my little gun, I crawl
All in the dark along the wall,
And follow round the forest track
Away behind the sofa back.

There, in the night, where none can spy,
All in my hunter's camp I lie,
And play at books that I have read
Till it is time to go to bed.

These are the hills, these are the woods,
These are my starry solitudes;
And there the river by whose brink
The roaring lions come to drink.

I see the others far away
As if in firelit camp they lay,
And I, like to an Indian scout,
Around their party prowled about.

So, when my nurse comes in for me,
Home I return across the sea,
And go to bed with backward looks
At my dear land of Story-books.