I read a great article the other day that I would like to share. The author’s reminisces of her childhood experience with books were almost identical to my own. Elisabeth Kushner writes:
At seven or eight years old I used to choose reading material by running my hand along the spines of the books in the library, convinced that when I found the right book I’d feel a buzz, a tingle, some physical communion with the item. I swear sometimes it happened. Though it might just have been a well-chosen font.
It can’t be all that uncommon, among book-lovers, to feel strongly that books are not just meaningful and cherished but actually magic—that all the love the reader has for a book, and all the time and attention the author put into it, invests it with something more than the sum of its parts, more than the words that comprise its intellectual content and the ink and paper and glue that make up its physical existence.
The article mentions Inkheart and Seven Day Magic
as magical “books within books”. Although I have never read the book that it is based upon (it’s actually sitting on my nightstand-I want to read it to my daughter but I’m not sure either of us will be able to get through the scene when Atreyu loses his horse), as a child the film version of the Never-Ending Story left me wondering how many of the characters from my favorite books might exist somewhere in their own universe.
Stop by the library and see if you can make a magical connection with a book (we have over 50,000 to choose from).
posted by Jody