The first time I cried because of a book was in kindergarten.
I already knew that reading was a way to share information; the red sign with the letters S-T-O-P meant that I should probably wait and look for cars before crossing the street to the park. I already knew that reading could be enjoyable; every spare moment was spent with my nose in a book, meeting new people and traveling to faraway places from the comfort of my living room. What I hadn’t known before, was that reading could make me feel sad as well.
One sunny winter afternoon, our teacher called us up one by one to her trapezoid table to read aloud for her. In the back of my mind, I knew that this was going to be some kind of test, but I never once thought that anything out of the ordinary would happen. In fact, I remember skipping all the way there in classic kindergartener fashion. I was pretty good at reading, so this was going to be a piece of cake!
When I sat down, she took out a book from her file folder, put it on the table, and opened it to the first page. I began to read confidently:
“Today was a bad day. My pet iguana Izzy died.”
I trailed off, looking at my teacher in horror. What kind of a book talked about death and sad things? But she nodded and gestured at me to continue, so I went on.
“…I drew a big heart because I loved him. I wrote that I missed him. I wrote that I would remember him…”
This was getting worse and worse by the second. I didn’t even make it through the third page before I burst into tears. My teacher set down her pen and tried to comfort me, saying “it’s just a story honey” but I was inconsolable. To me, it wasn’t “just a story.” She didn’t understand! Izzy and the boy were the best of friends and now Izzy was gone forever, never to play with his friend again! How did she not see the tragedy of the situation? How did she not feel the boy’s pain?
Up to that point, reading had been solely for entertainment. I never realized that words – mere scribbles on a page – could make me feel sadness, anger, and even despair. Words could make me cry about a boy and his iguana, despite never experiencing death or even having owned a pet. For the first time, I realized that books not only communicated information and the details of a story, but they could also be a means through which to share emotions with others.
After that experience, I avoided books grounded in reality for a while, preferring to stick to my familiar fairy tales all set in worlds where nothing bad ever happened. Rapunzel was trapped in her tower, but she got out eventually, didn’t she? Sure, the goat’s brothers may have been eaten by the wolf, but they were miraculously rescued from its stomach in the end by their clever mother (this of course wasn’t the true ending, but that’s another story). With these kinds of tales, I could always count on there being a happily ever after.
This worked for a while, but my relationship with reading was never quite the same. My definition of reading had been expanded, and I was curious to know what else was possible. Paragraph by paragraph, I began to explore other genres. Bad things did happen occasionally, and that was okay because I now knew that happened sometimes. If the boy was able to get through Izzy’s death, then other characters in other books could also get through their own misfortunes, and ultimately, so could I.
I really enjoyed reading your perspective and reading memories. To be completely frank, I am a little jealous of your passion for reading at a young age; even if it had led you to tears. For me the reading performance evaluations conducted by our elementary school teachers were only ever seen as a tool to measure your reading level and I oftentimes did not take them seriously. Admittedly, we had very different relationships with reading while growing up, however, looking back, I would have wanted to have been so invested in any story to the point of tears. As a side note, I found it comforting that you were able to restore your love for reading in fairy tales and the phrase “happily ever after” – I mean, why wouldn’t we want everything to always be “happily ever after” all the time. But in parallel I also acknowledge the importance of struggle expressed in books, because sometimes the greatest growth within a story and in life is achieved through a happy ending. Great job overall!
Hey Anna-Maria,
What a horrifying story! How could your teacher show that to an innocent kindergartner like you back in the day? Such a tragedy!
But in all seriousness, I think that the conflict between perceived optimism in stories and the stark reality of the world is actually kind of necessary. Actually, it does bring up some questions. Why are children’s books so innocent? Does it protect some nature of children? Is it worth protecting this innocent nature? What if we didn’t?
Children’s books are actually a really interesting topic. Because unlike the required sophistication to read them, they are extremely difficult to create. It must be simple, memorable, fun, and have an encompassing theme in there. It’s an art, and in this art, good art is easy to understand and easy to read as well.
And I’m curious. What are your thoughts on children’s books? Should they be written the way they are now? What elements would you modify?
-Kai
Hi Anna-Maria! I genuinely enjoyed reading your blog post and I love the way you write! The description of the day you read that book, with the trapezoid table and the sunny winter afternoon really helped me visualize the scene, and I love the flow of the entire piece. The rhetorical questions about how the teacher couldn’t understand you really emphasized the effect. I also relate a ton to your pivot from reading being solely entertainment, to learning that reading can be a a way to feel others’ emotions. There is no happily ever after in real life, and that’s why quality books frequently don’t have the best endings. Books for younger kids frequently try to shield kids from the “bad things” in life and they tend to be more happy and light-hearted, and it’s a hard bump to go over in life to realize that life isn’t awesome all the time. I really admire how you learned this early on through your kindergarten reading experience.
Anna-Maria, I love the incredible story you were able to capture about your relationship with reading! There is something so powerful about the disillusionment of reality that we all come to learn of at some point in our lives, and the way in which you came to understand the truth of our world’s lack of innocence is something incredibly significant. While it seems like a bad moment to be stuck with you forever, I feel that these unfortunate situations are the ones that enable us to grow the most, and they are the most significant in the grand scheme of our identities. I am also a person that definitely learned through books and movies that life is not as perfect as it seems, so your story is one I resonate with deeply as I can see the effect this reality has had on my own identity. I love how you were able to capture the issue you came across and how you grew from that, learning to eventually appreciate and accept life’s misfortunes, as this is something that I feel is so important to go through!
The trapezoid tables!! I loved those because they were always an opportunity for little me to show off my reading skills.
I think it’s so interesting that you have such a clear memory of the book and how it made you feel. I read so much when I was younger, but I’m not entirely sure when I first realized books could make me feel anything other than delight. I think some children’s books are actually quite sad, but we don’t fully understand them until we’re older. I say this because I definitely cried the first time I reread The Giving Tree myself.
Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t remember the last time I read a book that was exclusively happy, which I think is a good thing. After all, the world is not always a happy place, and humans are not always happy people, and I love it when literature reflects that reality. Reading a perfectly cheerful book set in a perfectly cheerful world would feel almost off-putting or disingenuous.
Books can definitely generate emotions, interesting that at a young age you were able to feel emotions beyond the text, beyond the boy and Izzy his iguana. It appears you are a sensitive reader. This is a compliment. Keep that quality. Thanks for sharing.