My dad used to tell us about the bookshelf in his grandma’s living room. It had glass doors that covered each shelf, he said, and he loved looking at the books his grandmother had behind that glass. There was a book of poetry that he loved, called “One Hundred and One Famous Poems”. But his favorite seemed to be the book of ‘fairy tales’, which meant those old stories passed down through generations. He often told us of Pinocchio and his telltale nose that wouldn’t let him tell falsehoods.
He was a good storyteller, my dad. Blind from his early 20s, reading was hard work for him, but on rare occasion he would don his special magnifying glasses and read to us. What a sacrifice of love that was! In order to see the letters on the page, he had to hold it close enough to nearly touch his nose. He could see only a few letters at a time that way, so he had to build the words in his mind letter by letter as he came to the end of each syllable. I cherish those times, because they were rare and because they were such an obvious demonstration of his deep love for us.
At some point, he and my mom bought a set of storybooks for the family called “My Book House”, and Mom would read from them to my brother and me. From the first two volumes, she read us nursery rhymes and simple stories for small children. This is where I learned about Humpty Dumpty, Mother Goose, morning routines, the romance of walking under an umbrella, and city life in the late 1940s and early 50s. From the middle volumes, she read us fairy tales like “Sleeping Beauty”, “Snow White”, “Puss and Boots” and “Jack the Giant Killer”. My dad, of course, liked the fairy tales and would tell them again and again. I still love reading those stories, preferably to an audience of children, though I rarely have opportunity. I value those old tales. They always seem to celebrate common sense and good character, treating the elderly (the “old hag”) with respect (because she usually turned out to be magical), and the fortune of being the youngest of three brothers who has been underappreciated until now. I like the story of the Princess on the Glass Hill. My dad liked “The Little Man as Big as Your Thumb with a Mustache Seven Miles Long”. I was just overwhelmed by the title of that one!
There is something special about the stories we grew up on. The princess in her castle, asleep until the right prince breaks through the spell and rescues her, or the young boy on the verge of adulthood who leaves home to seek his fortune through dangerous adventures and comes out victorious. The lessons in the stories apply to us all. Good character, politeness, hard work and perseverance win the day, no matter who you are, and as a small girl, I owned the lessons of the young brother as surely as I did the romance of the rescued princesses.
Good stories are gateways to magical kingdoms, wild adventures, and the development of grand imaginations. I want to go back and read those stories again. It’s never too late for romance and adventure, and being good to old hags with magical powers.
Over at Kathy's Place 