It was the 1960s and yes, my sixth grade teacher's name was Mrs. Love. She was soft-spoken, tall and beautiful, with a broad ready smile that lit up her face like sunshine, a face crowned with a halo of golden chin-length hair. Halfway through the school year she invited me to join the class’s elite literature group that met periodically at the back of the room at a low round table. I loved reading---my favorite authors were E. Nesbit, Elizabeth Enright, Madeleine L'Engle, and Edward Eager (I thought you had to have a capital E in your name to write good books)---and the very words literature group sparkled like stars. But I knew that the four kids in the group were the smartest in the whole class and I hesitated. One was my friend Delight (yes, that is her name) who always got straight A's and another was a boy everyone called The Walking Encyclopedia (he grew up to own a rare book store in New York City). It was Mrs. Love’s gentle encouragement---she lived up to her name--- that helped me overcome the intimidation I felt and I tentatively took my seat at the sacrosanct table like a humble worshiper at a shrine. We studied Louis Untermeyer's poem collection in which we were introduced to bits of Shakespeare, Longfellow, Dickinson, Carroll, Hopkins, Keats, and Blake. The book was illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund, whose wide-faced black-eyed children I liked to copy.
Then we read The Hobbit and painted a mural of the Shire in the school hallway. It was heaven. Delight and I went on to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy twice through during junior high. I happen to be reading it again now for the first time since then; I still own my original paperback copies. We just finished watching the movies again (extended versions this time) and I wanted to see how close they stay to the books. Well done, I'd say! Eternal truths abound! Thank you Mrs. Love for introducing J.R.R. Tolkien to me!
The books we read when we first fell in love with books often become our lifelong favorites. I only hope kids today choose some of the true classics. I've just filled my Blue Hill Books free library with a new collection called Young at Heart, youth classics for all ages. I've been rereading these classics and always find them well worth it, even better than ever!
