Catching the bookworm
By Chi-Young Kim
A while ago, a dear friend of mine, a fellow lover of books, sent me a huge box filled with children’s books. She works for a children’s book publisher and included a variety of different books for my daughter, both for now and for when she’s older. I was going to put away the more sophisticated books, but my default laziness got in the way and the entire bundle stayed on the coffee table for a while.
Turns out, that was a good thing. Apparently my judgment of what my toddler is ready for is completely inaccurate, as she quickly grew tired of what I thought were age-appropriate board books. She now always asks for the longer, narrative-driven books. As a lifelong bookworm, her love of books is thrilling to see. (I’m sure putting this fact out into the universe will mean that my daughter will start flushing them down the toilet next month.)
In the last two weeks or so, she has really gotten into a book called Animal Masquerade. It’s an impossibly long book, with endless animals dressing up as other animals one by one. Then they all go to a party. We usually read it first thing in the morning, three times in a row. My daughter, who doesn’t talk yet, will follow along with the motions, bellowing like an elephant or flapping like a bird. My favorite is when she holds her nose and shakes her head, imitating the stinky skunk.
When I tell my friend about this, she is touched. For adult book lovers, I think there’s something heartening about watching a very young child growing to love books. And it’s all the more special that, even though my book-maven friend and I haven’t lived in the same country in fifteen years, her books are making such an impact in my young kid’s daily life.
I loved books so much as a child that I still remember the drawings in the picture books. Make Way for Ducklings gave me a sense of ownership over Boston, my place of birth which I was too young to remember; I still fantasize about picking blueberries in tin pails and canning them for the winter (but not going home with a bear) as in Blueberries for Sal; I remember learning to read English with Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Back then my sister and I would act out the scenes of Are You My Mother?, pulling the white crocheted covers off our parents’ bed to mound a nest. My sister would climb in and pretend to be the baby bird, screeching, “Are you my mother?”
When I was older, I would traipse around the playground, pretending to be one of the Boxcar Children or one of the siblings in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. For some reason, I thought using a flowing stream to cool quarts of milk and making soup out of turnips was terribly romantic. And even now, when I see an old-fashioned wardrobe, I part the coats hanging there just to see the back, hoping that I, too, would find the snowy world on the other side.
Later, I read Anne of Green Gables until the books fell apart, completely identifying with the defiant redheaded orphan. I read them first in Korean, watched a cartoon made in Japan, and then finally read the originals. My family took a road trip all around eastern Canada when I was 13 or 14. I was deep in my teenage grumpy years already, and I was appalled by the thought of riding around in a van with my family for two weeks. I remember maybe ten things from that entire trip, and most of it is of my sister practicing her recorder in the back for hours on end. Entire provinces are missing from my memory. My parents tell me it’s because I slept most of the time. Apparently we saw fjords in Newfoundland.
I was a fully awake and excited participant in only one province: Prince Edward Island. I perked up on our way there, and was wide-eyed and in full-on tourist mode. I dragged everyone to every single house, pond, and field that had even a passing mention in Anne of Green Gables. By that time I had watched the movie many times, and I forced my family to endure listening to the entire series on tape in the van. We saw “Anne of Green Gables,” the play. I bought a t-shirt with Magog and Gog emblazoned on it. PEI was my drug.
And then, when we left, I promptly resumed my slumber and returned to being a cranky, obnoxious teen. The power of literature is such that it can turn even a sullen teenager into a starry-eyed tourist — at least for a few days. I hope I’ll be able to take my daughter to PEI when she’s a sullen teenager, and relive those exciting days, though she’ll probably roll her eyes the whole time.
Chi-Young Kim is a literary translator based in Los Angeles. She has translated works by Shin Kyung-sook, Kim Young-ha, and Jo Kyung-ran. Contact her at chiyoung@chiyoungkim.com or visit her website, chiyoungkim.com.