My Reading Journey (Melissa)

I grew up with a steady diet of ladybird books, the Twelve Dancing Princesses being one of my favourites. The bi-model story books fascinated me, especially when they had beautiful gowns, lush and fantastical places, and fanciful drawings. Perhaps you could say that as a child, my imagination was captivated more by the nouns of a narrative - places, people, things - and less by its plot.

When I was old enough to appreciate a more text-rich text, my parents introduced me to good old Roald Dahl and a host of his beloved characters. James, Danny and Charlie were fine upstanding young lads in their own right, but I found myself connecting more strongly with more female-centric books. The Witches, for instance, intrigued me to the point that I still remember trotting to my stationary box (for it was a box then, with buttons you could press to reveal secret compartments and a customised pencil sharpener) and sniffing ball-point pens in order to verify what blue ink might have tasted like. Matilda taught me to cherish books and reading, and Miss Honey immediately became my first image of a perfect teacher: kind, empathetic and sincere. On quiet Sunday afternoons, I sometimes still flip through the yellowing pages full of Quentin Blake's simple illustrations, and find myself slipping quite easily into the time I first began to form personal convictions about what it meant to be a good person and the importance of earning an honest living. These are always times of renewal. The books I read as a child still have the power to surprise me today. Some months ago, I chanced upon a second hand book fair and rescued a slightly tattered copy of Danny The Champion of the World. On the last page, I stumbled upon a secret note that I had never seen before in all the times I read other copies of the text, and one that spoke simultaneously to me as a child and me as an adult (see left).

Fast-forwarding through the slightly embarrassing phase of Sweet Valley, Goosebumps and a very brief affair with Archie comics, the next literary milestone in my life was Anne of Green Gables and the rest of the Anne series. Oddly enough, it was not Anne who won me over to the book at first, but the gentle and kindly adoptive father and "kindred spirit", Matthew. The book tempered the raging storms of my adolescence because it centred so much on giving people a chance, not judging a book by its cover, being thoughtful and forgiving, the value of restraint etc. It also validated my wild imagination and quirkiness, because Anne was every bit as odd and extreme in her thoughts as I felt I was, and if readers liked her then there really was nothing wrong with being myself. Interestingly, Anne was also a teacher like Miss Honey, with a trying backstory and loads of personal growth. Her temperament was not very different from Miss Honey in that she was gentle and kind, and inspired children for good. However, Anne also possessed something that I began to value in these teenage years - she possessed wisdom, and understood the value of rebuking a person without them feeling judged. The book continued to shape me as a person and a friend, as well as my personal ambition of becoming a teacher.

In my young adult years, I began to pore over the novels of Jane Austen - much to the horror of my university classmates. (At the time, dissing Austen's writing as formulaic and disempowering for women seemed the common sentiment for a critical reader.) I loved the irony embedded in her writing, and the way it was humourous without being unkind. Too many books that I studied in school seemed to have narrative voices that channeled narcissism and self-entitled excess. While they were fun to read and discuss, Austen, to me, was a breath of fresh air. Of course, watching the film industry repeatedly massacre Pride and Prejudice through various representations was traumatic, but a small price to pay for loving a book.

Today, I find myself returning to my old guilty pleasures. Anne of Green Gables and Roald Dahl classics remain a constant companion. I think it is good to regularly reconnect with the parts of myself that were easily delighted. I also confess that I now favour the children's books which centre around school, like Harry Potter, the Malory Towers series and The Naughtiest Girl in School series.