I was only 7 when I won the biggest contest of my life.
That’s when Hayner Public Library in downtown Alton Illinois held a summer reading contest for children. After we read a book, we had to write a short review of it to verify we had actually read it. I think I read something like 100 books that summer. It wasn’t work. It was fun. And I got a free book for reading the most books — I think I chose some kind of hardcover nature book.
But the real prize I got was a lot bigger. And to tell the truth, I’d have won that whether I read more or less books than other kids. I won the content whenever it was that I became so emotionally bonded to reading. So the world was no longer just my house and yard and neighborhood and church in Alton Illinois.
Suddenly it was Oz. Suddenly it was the barnyard with Freddy the Pig. And Mars in many different depictions. So many places, so many wild and wonderful people. I wanted to read books to experience the adventures. To learn the fascinating facts of the world of insects. The prize and whatever recognition I received were secondary.
And not long after that I was able to follow my mother up the stairs to the adult library. I vividly recall finding the science fiction/fantasy section, looking up at the shelves and seeing a thick book by someone named Arthur C Clarke and just being so thrilled by the title — ACROSS THE SEA OF STARS. The image and thrill of interstellar space as an ocean and crossing it for an infinite number of possible adventures, has never left me.
That small library (perhaps a gift of the “greedy” Andrew Carnegie, perhaps not) held incredible gifts of worlds and information for me. I wandered through both the fiction and nonfiction sections. I read THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R. R. Tolkien long before it was the “in” thing to do, which was long before the movies came out. I’d read Pierre Boulle’s many novels long before the movie PLANET OF THE APES came out.
I practiced yoga and read about Hindu and Buddhist religions long before The Beatles brought international attention to the religions of India. I read books about the paranormal long before I was able to find FATE magazine on the newstand.
Thanks to constant reading I’m quick and good at extracting information and digesting it. And at writing my own fiction and nonfiction. Many Internet marketers pay to have articles written. Not me. I get paid to write them. And although my dreams of writing bestselling novels have taken a backseat to other parts of my life, there’re still there, just waiting until I have the time to devote to them.
And I owe it all to the public library. Thank you.
