DailyLit Blog

Making Sense of “The Ones” from Last Week’s Question of the Week

November 18th, 2008 Maggie

Our Question of the Week last week took a quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as our jumping-off point: “Every reader has his first book; I mean to say, one book among all others which in early youth first fascinates his imagination, and at once excites and satisfies the desires of his mind.” For Longfellow, that book was Geoffrey Crayon’s Sketch-Book by Washington Irving. We asked our readers: what was yours?

The responses were as varied and marvelous as our readers themselves: among the responders I found a young Sherlock Holmes fan and someone who was inspired by the key lessons about tolerance in The Color of Love. One reader still remembers wearing down batteries while reading The Hobbit by flashlight, while for another reader, Atticus Finch’s declaration that one should never lie to children has rung true for years. From Alice in Wonderland to Crime and Punishment, the different books that have had a profound impact on people form a fascinating list.

Diverse as they are, it seems to me there are two main threads: books that are strikingly imaginative and sparked our own imaginations, and books that very explicitly treat children as adults–I’m thinking here especially of Atticus’s line. We remember books that talked to us like grown-ups (or the first adult books we “got” as kids) and ones that encouraged us to leave our world for places of fancy that can only be found down the rabbit-hole or deep under the sea. I wonder if this all speaks to our desire to escape–somehow–from the awkwardness of being caught between childhood and adulthood. Or maybe not–either way, fascinating stuff. Anyone else care to give it the ol’ Freudian try?

Entry Filed under: General, Question of the Week