Today I have a post authored by Melanie exactly about (you guessed it) SUMMER READING!
Summer Reading
By Melanie Dickerson
When I was a kid in the 1970s and ‘80s, I loved to read, and I read a lot during the
summer—when I wasn’t climbing trees, building forts, or riding motorcycles with my
I grew up in a rural area of south Alabama about 50 miles from Harper Lee’s
hometown of Monroeville, the basis for the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird. The school
I attended had a very small library with mostly classics, many of them so old their pages
were yellowed, sometimes had a little mold on the edges, and a few holes where rats had
eaten them. That kind of thing didn’t bother me, as long as all the words were there.
In the summer, it was a little harder to get books. We were relatively poor, but I
would save up my allowance to buy books through the Scholastic order forms we got at
school. Then I would re-read the books over the summer. My mother did sometimes take
me to the library, not in our tiny hometown, which did not have a library, but in another
nearby town, Georgiana. It was also very small and was only open maybe three days a
After borrowing my school library’s copy of Gone With the Wind a few times, I
bought my own and re-read it every summer when I was a teenager. Since there were no
book stores in our area, I joined a mail order “book club” and started ordering books from
there. But I also started writing, and I can remember writing my first novel at the age of
13 in a notebook, then typing it on a typewriter, sitting at the kitchen table. I can
remember my thighs sweating on the fake leather chairs in the Alabama heat. But seeing
my stack of typewritten pages and knowing this was a story I had created was a
Summers were wonderful. I was free to lie around on the couch and read as much
as I wanted to—in between my chores of shelling peas, washing dishes, and hanging out
clothes on the clothesline. Reading could take me away from life and transport me
somewhere just a bit more exciting, like the high seas in Rafael Sabatini’s The Sea-Hawk,
or the French political intrigues and fight scenes of The Three Musketeers by Alexander
Dumas. As I grew older, I could imagine myself as an ordinary-young-woman-turned-
romance-heroine, like Lizzie Bennet in Pride and Prejudice or Anne in Anne of Green
Gables or Jo March in Little Women or Jane in Jane Eyre.
I grew up reading the classics. My own children these days don’t have much
patience for the outdated language and slower pace of these old classics, but I’m not sorry
that these were the staples of my library, and therefore, of my childhood reading.
Be sure to check out Melanie's books this summer if you haven't ever read them!
The Healers Apprentice is Sleeping Beauty, The Merchants Daughter is Beauty and the Beast, The Fairest Beauty is Snow White, The Captive Maiden in Cinderella and The Princess Spy is The Frog Prince. (And I did that by memory so if I am wrong please correct me in the comments below!)
I have not read The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest yet but I believe that it is a Swan Lake and Robin Hood retelling!
Out Now:
Coming Soon:
I have not read any of these yet! I really would love to. And the covers are so gorgeous!
ReplyDelete