♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦
Topic #45
Your first memory of books or reading.
Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! If you’re new to the series, the authors included are always grateful for your reads and appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors will engage and impress you weekly, so be prepared to become a regular reader.
I can’t tell you how old I was. I just remember holding this children’s book–something about Mother Goose. The Cover was purple and Mother Goose was flying on a great big grey saddled avian. It was one of those personalized books. My brother had one too. I had another one that was Snow White. I barley understood who the other kids were supposed to be in the book. I only recognized my brother’s name.
Sitting on the edge of my granddad’s bed, I penciled my name into the cover…several times. I wasn’t marking the book as mine. Remember that my brother had a copy of his own. I was practicing my name, in the “This Book Belongs To” badge on the front end paper before the title pages. I recognized that was where my name went, but then I got carried away with it, excited I could mark my identity on paper.
The graphite renderings, like sticks roughly stacked together spelled my name. I wasn’t in school yet. I stayed at grandma’s during the day while mom and dad worked. My heart is still tied to that house–even after my uncle manipulated it away from them, turned it into a rental and tore 
apart everything I cherished from my childhood.
I still dream about their house. It always served as a sanctuary from my nightmares. Oddly. I say that, because the house has a story behind it, but I will save that story for another time. Suffice it to say, it was the other place I liked to be, when I wasn’t in my room with my stacks of books.
I remember mom telling me she had gotten me a subscription to Scholastic Books. I wasn’t sure what that all meant until they came in the mail every so often. It was pretty awesome, actually. I still have all of those books, and then some. I became very much attached to them and well…the rest is history.
My mini library definitely shaped me into a writer, and made my intelligence what it is today. My mom had the foresight to set me on that path.
My writing has also improved. I’ve received many compliments on it, and call it Kelligraphy.
So, let’s see what the other authors’ first memories are…
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Hi Kelly, thanks for sharing your early experiences. It’s amazing to see how our respective memories about books have shaped our writing and other career experiences! Nice article.
It is amazing, as if we were just meant to do this. I’m always questioning if we really have free will or not and to what extent.
I have a Mother Goose book with that photo! Technically, it belongs to my daughter, but her dad and I own it until she has a home of her own. Somehow that photo just says “FAIRYTALE FUN!!!!” to me.
And, I feel the same way about that house with the book box that is my first actual memory. It was actually the home of Alaska’s delegate to Congress – Ralph Rivers, who was Dad’s friend, and needed someone to watch his place while he was gone to Washington for two years. At the end of his term, he wanted nothing more than to come back, so we had to move AGAIN. About five years later, my parents finally bought a house of their own, but we moved a lot when I was a kid.
I love looking back. My mom is always astonished at how much I remember and the detail. And yet, I have trouble remembering yesterday’s details. So odd.
We never forget our first books. Thanks for sharing.
My mother got us a subscription to Highlights magazine and it would get passed around among us kids. Some copies managed to survive long enough to be passed on to the grandkids!
I never had those. Only saw them at the veterinarian’s office and other kid’s who had them.