It's a paradox I fully understand but refuse to accept: I am so busy teaching my kids how to read that I have absolutely no time to do it myself. Every time I open a book, I start separating the novel line by line, pulling apart its individual threads and weaving them into worksheets that ask the student to Describe, Explain, or Summarize. And if I'm feeling bold, they may even Analyze or Reflect, courtesy of the Common Core word bank of buzzwords. At some point in my short time as an English teacher, I stopped reading stories and I started dissecting texts, separating and splicing novels only to reshape them in a way that would make even Mary Shelley shudder. Then I lay my creation on my kids' desks, and I bring the monster that once was The Great Gatsby or Romeo and Juliet to life. The once-was novel exhales a slow, putrid breath, opens its dead yellow eyes, and begins to tell its story.
But I digress. If this post lapses into pedagogy, no amount of mad scientists or lightning bolts will bring it back. I do love my career, and I have worked hard to make sure that reading isn't an experiment as much as it is an experience for my kids. For now, rest assured that I don't think of teaching as a Gothic tragedy, with the sole and obvious exception of Mondays. My point is that during my last contract, I didn't get to read for the unadulterated bliss of reading, and I miss the escapism. So during my time off as an unemployed and student-less teacher, I have embraced my freedom to read a book, savor it, and not once think about how I would teach it to a class.
As a teacher, I have officially declared this February and March as my summer break, defying all calendars who dare to contradict me. But to be fair to my friends in the arctic Midwest, this is truly my summer because 1) winter doesn't happen in Florida, so what else would it be? And 2) it's summer in the southern hemisohere, which is where I am lucky enough to be moving. So to celebrate my untraditional vacation time, I've decided to read. A lot.
Typically when I have the opportunity to binge read (symptoms include, but are not limited to, 12 hours on the couch, candlelight, rainy days, and about five cups of coffee) I pick a theme for my reading list. Oftentimes, the theme is simply a loose connection among stories that is purely coincidental. But the world is a big place full of some pretty big books, and this has been my way of imposing order on the chaos that is the library.
- Last year: From Page to Screen (Fight Club, Jurassic Park, etc.)
- Two years ago: A Lifetime Special (The Autobiography of Malcolm X, I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings, The Cancer Journals, etc.)
- Three years ago: A Friend's Favorites (The Shell Collector, The Poisonwood Bible, etc.)
Disclaimer: I recognize that thematic book binges aren't normal, and I respect life choices of all varieties. This is me doing me.
This year *drum roll, please* I decided to be nostalgic and reread my favorite books from my childhood. My reasoning was rooted in the truth that we are shaped by the stories that come into our lives, past and present, both real and imagined. The stories we read indelibly mark us with thoughts and emotions that are someone else's before they become ours, and we learn to see the world through a lens that is crafted and refined by a range of life experiences only understood vicariously.
Moonlight! She thought, wiggling her toes in it. In many stories moonlight had magical properties...She couldn't even look at the moon with eyes unclouded by veils of letters. Couldn't she wipe all of those words out of her head and heart, and see the world through her own eyes again, at least once? -Elinor Loredan, Inkdeath
Years ago, I was someone else entirely, and the path I travelled was altered and marked by authors and characters I only met printed on a page. My goal for this summer was to find out who little-Joe had been, what he enjoyed, and finally, if he would be proud of how his story was unfolding. My first step was to drive to the library and rent a pile of books, taking their titles from little more than a faded memory. The second step was to jump down the rabbit hole of a long-forgotten past, chasing a child through the pages he escaped into all those years ago. By following him, I found my way back to the man I am today.As a kid, no food sounded as glorious as Otter's Hotroot Soup or Deep 'n Ever Pie from Redwall. When I was about eight years old, I tried to bring Brian Jacques' words to life, which resulted in little more than raw walnuts dusted with confectioners sugar. In my eyes, however, it was a feast. And like any good child from this generation, I waited all night on my eleventh birthday for my letter inviting me to attend Hogwarts. I'm still waiting, which is understandable considering that the Atlantic is too big for any owl to cross alone. Other series of note: The Shannara series, Artemis Fowl, The Circle of Magic, The Young Wizard series, and Inkheart.
I loved all things fantastical, stories imbued with a touch of magic that took me into a world buried beneath the pages. Occasionally, I would walk by the front door of my house and look out of the peep hole, hoping against all odds that Gandalf, Hagrid, or both, would be peeking through at the same time, waiting to take me away on an epic adventure. At night, I would lie awake imagining how a journey would challenge and change me, forever marking me as extraordinary. There simply had to be more to the world than the one that surrounded me, more to who I was than the role I was prescribed at birth. I think that every kid wants to be special, and I was simply waiting for the opportunity that would let me prove to the world, and myself, how special I could be.But, for all intents and purposes, I stayed pretty ordinary. I never rode a tornado to Oz, wore a ring to rule them all, or paid tuition to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. I remained trapped in a world that was suffocatingly real, going to school, getting hired, paying bills...
This summer, as I remembered the dreams of Little-Joe, I wondered if he would be okay with the adult that I am. Would he want to be a registered voter who has a running grocery list on the refrigerator? Would he be okay with being an all-too-average Joe without a journey?
No, he wouldn't be. He would never want to feel trapped in a world in which there was nothing more than met the eye, nothing waiting to be discovered and explored. He would try more than anything to push against the limits, and if a journey didn't find him, he would make his own. The pressure of an everyday existence would be too much to bear. I hope that today, I can lighten that load.Some day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again. -C.S. Lewis
I am not vain enough to call myself a hero, but I am also not quite humble enough to deny that I am going on a journey. Moving to Chile means buying a one-way ticket to a city, a country, and a continent that neither Little-Joe nor I have never set eyes on. Only Google Images has shown me the Andes mountains that tower over Santiago, and as excited as I am, a lot of my future is shrouded in the unknown that will inevitably and drastically change my life. When I got the email offering me this job, it was a call to an adventure; and if I wasn't the kid who looked to escape all those years ago, I probably wouldn't have taken the chance to go. So for that, I owe little-Joe for reading on the playground, submerging himself in stories that were far beyond his reality. Because he refused to be mundane, to settle for the beaten path, I have the opportunity to set out on a road, and so far, there is no end in sight.Little-Joe's story continues, and it will be an adventure that is full of places and characters neither him nor I can imagine. Unfortunately, I can't promise my past-self that he will ever find a land full of dragons or discover his hidden legacy of magic. I can't promise him the supernatural, but I will do my best to guarantee him the extraordinary. Somewhere not too far in his future, his story will slip out from between the pages of the books he loves, and after years of waiting, his journey will begin.
