Growing up, I was fortunate to be surrounded by books. I can still remember the incredible feeling of losing myself in a book, traveling to a new place, another time, and inviting wonderful characters into my head.
Nurse Nancy
Nurse Nancy, a Little Golden Book (Simon & Schuster 1958) was a favorite because the heroine was named Nancy, and she loved to ‘fix’ people — a harbinger of things to come. The book apparently came with a box of cool decorated Band-aids in different shapes, but I don’t remember those, since the book first belonged to my cousin Barbara.
The book is torn and scribbled on, but I don’t think that was my fault. I seem to blame book damage on everyone else — my sister, my cousin — but if I did damage any childhood books, I blocked it out, since I don’t remember doing it.
Miraculously, my Aunt Bev kept this book, and years later when I mentioned how much I loved it, she very kindly gave it to me, with my cousin’s permission.
Cute. As I was growing up, my mother never stopped me nor my sister from scribbling in books. Even though all of her friends gasped at the ‘disrespect’ my sister and I supposedly showed the books by writing in all of the pages. She said it was because that was how we learned to read and write. We were copying the text in some places, or writing a pretend grocery list, or secret notes to our imaginary friends. She is convinced that is why I ended being a writer. Who knows.
Some of my childhood book collector friends freak out at scribbles in books, but we did it if we were playing school or something