Me and Bibi: My memory from the world of books

Not the title of a new book for teenage girls, but a memory that jumped out at me almost thirty years later.

 

I recently had to clear out the entire downstairs of the house to lay new flooring, and as part of the move, the library was affected. For a lot of reasons I'll discuss another time, I'm the kind of reader who has almost exclusively switched to ebooks.

 

So my physical book treasures had been gathering dust for years and I decided to take over the library. A nightmare for some, I'm sure, but for me, it was like a trip to prehistoric times.

 

All the way up in the front row, there were books I had last bought when I was about sixteen. I have to say that I've always read almost all genres, however, seeing Sir Pratchett, The Red Library and the thriller The Bone Collector next to each other was a little strange after all.

 

Once I got the first rows of the already largely groped books off the shelf, I got even further along in my reminiscing. And once again, I was surprised by the odd combination of authors I'd chosen.

 

Between the ages of ten and fifteen, I was an avid reader of Karl May (younger years please ask Google, it's clear you're not getting much) and Jules Verne (if you're not getting it here too, you should have fixed that by now), all interspersed with such gems as We Children of the Zoo station, Herak and Katyn.

 

Then followed the last shelf at the very bottom, my own first editions. I was diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia in first grade. My mother solved it in a very elegant way. She bought stacks of children's books and every night I had to read stories to my brother. I will never thank her enough for that.

 

Not only am I a very good reader, but more importantly, she instilled in me a love of books. So in my early reading career, there are those aforementioned storybooks, then The Children of Bullerbyn and finally Bibi.

 

A book by the writer Karin Michaëlis. When I saw it again all these years later, I was almost immediately reminded of the joy, excitement, and thrill I felt as a child reading it.

 

To this day, I can still describe her amazing adventures, but also, watching her story made me understand the importance of friends, family, forgiveness, and most importantly, not being afraid to follow your dreams.

 

To sum it up, nostalgia overcame me and instead of packing, I looked at books. However, looking back on my journey through the literary world from my first book to adulthood, reassured me of two things.

 

Keep the kids reading. Encourage them to do so. Because those who understand books understand people better.

Don't censor what they want to read. Lately, I've been seeing the efforts of some concerned parents who, fearing for their children's mental health, are throwing even classic fairy tales by Božena Němcová to the imaginary limit, or at least adapting them so that no one "dies" in them.

 

Look at what I've chewed up into my adolescence. And I assure you I have no drug habit, no unhealthy urge to kill someone with steam, to bake a cake out of everything I meet at home, nor do I think working as an executioner is somehow cool.

 

Kids aren't stupid. Let them explore the world the way they want to, at least the one in books. Because it's a world that can give them so much, and they can come back to it any time they want. All they have to do is reopen those tattered covers and read the yellowed pages.

 

Think back to your favorite book from your childhood. Why did it leave such an impression on you? If it made you excited, thoughtful, and amused, pass those feelings on to the next generation. Good things are meant to be shared.

 

P. S. Did you know? A book that also excited me a lot as a child was a novel by Eduard Storch- The Mammoth Hunters. Nowadays, when you say the best children's book, most of us think of Harry Potter. Nothing against the little wizard, but Mammoth Hunters is over a hundred years old and has lost absolutely none of its charm. They should be in every child's bookshelf, like so many other age-tested titles.

 

We can only hope that Hogwarts and Co. will one day take their place alongside them, as another classic that has not lost its charm over time and will happily welcome generations of new young readers.