My book reading is extensive and varied as a Canadian
child.
My parents have a rich command of English, yet are certainly not academics.
My father never reads fiction, not one novel, in his entire life. He only reads the truth, or what passes for it. History,
biography, politics.
I like the drawings in books that originate in France: Babar the Elephant,
Tin Tin, and Madeline. But whenever we go to the supermarket, my mom lets me buy one American book at the check-out counter,
and it is a Little Golden Book, which I amass a large collection of.
My parents sign me
up for a children's book club.
I receive a book every month, with some well known stories, shortened for
children. They buy me classic comic books, and the murders in Crime and Punishment, and Oliver Twist, frighten me, at a young
age.
I discover Agatha Christie and Paul Gallico in my mother's magazines, and
begin reading adult novels when I am eight or nine.
My father teaches
me to read, when I am only three, and I listen to the words he repeats, and scribble them out with a grey lead pencil, when
I memorize them, where the sound on his lips, matches with the place on the page.
My father sometimes speaks in Pig Latin, Amscray! My mother sometimes quotes the King James Bible,
and both parents have a rich folklore of English idioms and slang.
Both parents
swear, especially when they are angry. Damn you! That bastard. That God damned so and so.
I love pop culture. I buy Mad Magazine, and Harvey Comic Books. I like stories about girls who do what they
want, Little Lulu, Little Dot, and later Nancy Drew. I like the Bobbsey Twins and Pollyanna.
I like to read about women who are queens, not princesses. I locate the few books in the school library about
queens, and many seem to end up quite badly. Marie Antoinette, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey. My favorite
is Elizabeth Tudor.
I don't want to be a princess, and I also don't want to be a particular type of queen, the type of
queen that ends up on a blood stained page of history. Yet they intrigue me.
I am a Canadian, my teachers and my parents
make me feel that anything is possible.
