On one of
the books that most powerfully sparked my young imagination.
In my
experience, there are a couple of fundamental truths about young kids and
books: all young kids like listening to books (says something about the power of
words, images, and stories, I’d say); and young kids don’t tend to be very
picky about the quality of those books (ditto, I suppose; but also something
about how taste evolves). I won’t name names, as this is supposed to be a
positive series, but I have found that in these early years my boys have enjoyed
the worst books I’ve ever read them nearly as much as they have Frog
and Toad, Dr.
Seuss, the Elephant and Piggie series,
and so on. Which makes me that much more excited to see which books start to
speak to them more individually and meaningfully, which ones begin to take hold
of their imaginations not just because they create stories out of words and
pictures on a page (again, a magical thing no matter what), but because of some
of the specific effects and meanings contained within their particular words
(and possibly images, although I’m thinking especially of slightly older,
non-picture books).
I think Edward
Ormondroyd’s David and the Phoenix
(1957) might have been the first book to do that for me, but since I’ve
blogged about it before, I’ll focus here on another, even more lastingly
influential (for me) work. Or rather many such works—because when my Dad and I
had finished reading more or less all of the 30-odd books in “Franklin W. Dixon’s” (a pseudonym
for multiple ghost-writers) Hardy
Boys series, I was old enough to move on by myself to the late 1980s series
reboot and tackle most of those numerous contemporary, teen-oriented updates as
well. All told, I must have spent tens of thousands of pages solving mysteries
alongside Frank and Joe Hardy (as well as their parents, peppery Aunt Gertrude,
food-loving Chet, and the other recurring characters). But while most of those
pages have blurred together rather thoroughly (partly because of the similarly
recurring phrases and tropes, such Gertrude’s peppery nature; partly because I’m
getting old), I can still remember quite vividly how taken I was by the first
volume in the original series, The
Tower Treasure.
There are
lots of reasons why the Hardy’s first adventure spoke to me so vividly: it was
one of the first mystery stories I had encountered, with all the pleasures of
uncertainty and fear and yet detection and resolution that the genre presents;
it featured likeable young boys acting like, well, recognizable young boys yet
having wondrous and meaningful adventures; the cover
picture was just plain amazing (the image thing never entirely goes away). But
I would say that one particularly potent reason aligns the Hardy series with David and the Phoenix very
interestingly: both are clearly set in the world of reality, with both
communities and villainous forces that are very much of that world; yet both
suggest the possibility that their heroes can step outside of the norms of that
world in order to make it better. They do so of course in dramatically
different ways—David by befriending and helping preserve a host of mythological
creatures, the Hardy Boys by solving a seemingly supernatural yet ultimately
all-too-real mystery and saving the day—but nonetheless, in each case the
protagonists both confront the realities around them and refuse to be limited
by them, creating and living their own stories within those worlds. Pretty
evocative and enduring lesson for this American Studier.
Next
shaping book tomorrow,
Ben
PS.
Thoughts? Books that shaped you? I’d love to hear ‘em, for lots of reasons
including the weekend’s post!
8/27
Memory Day nominees: A tie between two very
different but equally
unique, talented,
and influential American authors,
Theodore
Dreiser and William
Least Heat-Moon.
Beautiful words. Thanks for sharing Ben.
ReplyDeleteThanks Mike! What book(s) especially spoke to young Mike P?
ReplyDelete