The Introduction of Possibility
Mrs. Katz, the librarian at the elementary school I attended, was very opinionated about the kinds of books children should or should not read. Our small basement library was filled with reference books, volumes of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew novels. But the kinds of books I liked to read were not found on those dusty shelves. I once overheard Mrs. Katz explain her hatred of Judy Blume, one of my favorite authors. “She’s just not a good writer,” she said. “The books she writes are too mature for children.” Not only was this statement a bold-faced lie, in my fourth-grade opinion, it only made me want to read more Blume.
My mother got me a public library card and I was allowed to walk the seven blocks from home to the Maple Valley library. To a voracious reader, a library card is better than high-limit credit card. I carried home as many books as my small arms could carry. The myriad choices were daunting to a 9-year old, but I made it through Blume, through Cleary and into the D’s. Authors I had never read before, but I happened across an old, worn hardcover edition of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Every book I’d ever read up to that point had been straightforward, reality based, and even still, those are the stories I enjoy most, the stories I enjoy writing the most. But Dahl introduced me to a nonsensical world in which anything, indeed, everything was possible. There was a separation in my mind concerning the world of fairy tales and the world of say, Ramona and Beezus, and I’d never encountered a book that dealt in both. Dahl’s description of the Bucket family’s destitution almost made poverty admirable. I began savoring my Hershey bars, eating them bit by bit, trying to make them last as long as Charlie did.
Here, in this story, was a hero’s journey. A classic rags to riches tale, but one that moves through a magical world of Oompa Loompas, Everlasting Gobstoppers and chocolate rivers. Charlie Bucket, with his 10-cent birthday candy bars and daily cabbage soup diet was a character that I recognized. From Aesop’s fables, he was the tortoise, slow and steady, but destined to win it all. A charmed prince disguised as a hopelessly innocent, hopelessly poverty-stricken little boy.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory became a precursor to other eventual childhood favorites, Norman Juster’s Phantom Tollbooth, and Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story. I was entranced by the ridiculousness of the story. It was a world that I wanted to wallow in – who could not want to follow Charlie into Wonka’s factory? And once there, what child would not want to stay?
After my first read, I knew my mother would love it. But she worked nights and slept days, which didn’t leave much time for reading. She asked me to read the book to her as she dressed for work. We settled into a routine; I lay on the carpeted hallway floor as she dashed back and forth between her bedroom and the bathroom. It took us a full workweek to finish the novel. My mother enjoyed the story, as I thought she would. She interrupted me with her comments, “Now if they are that poor, he know he shouldn’t be buying tobacco,” and stopped me to point out the underlying morality in the story, “See, that’s what happens when you don’t listen. I like this story.” I’ll never forget how she laughed at the end, when Charlie, Grandpa Joe and Willy Wonka crashed into the family’s house.
CRASH, went the elevator, right down through the roof of the house into the old people’s bedroom. Showers of dust and broken tiles and bits of wood and cockroaches and spiders and bricks and cement went raining down on the three old ones that were laying in the bed, and each of them thought the end of the world was come.[1]
My mother stood in front of the bathroom mirror, one hand holding the Maybelline mascara brush in the air as she laughed, her head tilted back, neck exposed, hair curled around her ear. That may have been the moment when something came together in my mind. I could make my mother laugh like that – I could make other people laugh like that with my own stories. It’s fair to say that I chose this book partially because that memory is precious to me and in that moment, I felt as if I’d also found a golden ticket.
[1] Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (New York: Penguin, 1964) 153.
My mother got me a public library card and I was allowed to walk the seven blocks from home to the Maple Valley library. To a voracious reader, a library card is better than high-limit credit card. I carried home as many books as my small arms could carry. The myriad choices were daunting to a 9-year old, but I made it through Blume, through Cleary and into the D’s. Authors I had never read before, but I happened across an old, worn hardcover edition of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Every book I’d ever read up to that point had been straightforward, reality based, and even still, those are the stories I enjoy most, the stories I enjoy writing the most. But Dahl introduced me to a nonsensical world in which anything, indeed, everything was possible. There was a separation in my mind concerning the world of fairy tales and the world of say, Ramona and Beezus, and I’d never encountered a book that dealt in both. Dahl’s description of the Bucket family’s destitution almost made poverty admirable. I began savoring my Hershey bars, eating them bit by bit, trying to make them last as long as Charlie did.
Here, in this story, was a hero’s journey. A classic rags to riches tale, but one that moves through a magical world of Oompa Loompas, Everlasting Gobstoppers and chocolate rivers. Charlie Bucket, with his 10-cent birthday candy bars and daily cabbage soup diet was a character that I recognized. From Aesop’s fables, he was the tortoise, slow and steady, but destined to win it all. A charmed prince disguised as a hopelessly innocent, hopelessly poverty-stricken little boy.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory became a precursor to other eventual childhood favorites, Norman Juster’s Phantom Tollbooth, and Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story. I was entranced by the ridiculousness of the story. It was a world that I wanted to wallow in – who could not want to follow Charlie into Wonka’s factory? And once there, what child would not want to stay?
After my first read, I knew my mother would love it. But she worked nights and slept days, which didn’t leave much time for reading. She asked me to read the book to her as she dressed for work. We settled into a routine; I lay on the carpeted hallway floor as she dashed back and forth between her bedroom and the bathroom. It took us a full workweek to finish the novel. My mother enjoyed the story, as I thought she would. She interrupted me with her comments, “Now if they are that poor, he know he shouldn’t be buying tobacco,” and stopped me to point out the underlying morality in the story, “See, that’s what happens when you don’t listen. I like this story.” I’ll never forget how she laughed at the end, when Charlie, Grandpa Joe and Willy Wonka crashed into the family’s house.
CRASH, went the elevator, right down through the roof of the house into the old people’s bedroom. Showers of dust and broken tiles and bits of wood and cockroaches and spiders and bricks and cement went raining down on the three old ones that were laying in the bed, and each of them thought the end of the world was come.[1]
My mother stood in front of the bathroom mirror, one hand holding the Maybelline mascara brush in the air as she laughed, her head tilted back, neck exposed, hair curled around her ear. That may have been the moment when something came together in my mind. I could make my mother laugh like that – I could make other people laugh like that with my own stories. It’s fair to say that I chose this book partially because that memory is precious to me and in that moment, I felt as if I’d also found a golden ticket.
[1] Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (New York: Penguin, 1964) 153.
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