Saturday, July 25, 2009

Ozma and the Peach

*Reading*

I read voraciously as a kid. Every weekend we went to the library and I
checked out the maximum number of books they allowed. I liked books that
came in a series, so I could plow through them. I read all the Nancy Drew,
Hardy Boys, and Bobbsey Twins books. I read all the books I could find by
Judy Blume, Lois Duncan, Piers Anthony, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. I
absolutely loved the "A Wrinkle in Time" books by Madeleine L'Engle, and my
favorite of all time were the "Wizard of Oz" books by L. Frank Baum (but not
those knock-offs). I read a lot of books though, all sorts. I liked books I
could lose myself in, books with female protagonists, books with adventure
and travel and fantasy. File this one under escape. The worlds in the books
seemed more real to me than my own life. I preferred it that way. File this
coping mechanism under escape. It's interesting what I remember from these
books now, though. I remember Ozma held captive in a peach pit, and Dorothy
searching for her. "Tiger Eyes" was my favorite Judy Blume book, which is
kind of about PTSD. I remember a Lois Duncan book with a girl with an
abusive father who she hit in the head with a frying pan after he put her
mom in the hospital and then beat her, and in one of the "A Wrinkle in Time"
books, Charles Wallace inhabits the body of a boy who is being abused. I
never regarded myself as an abused child (see "Minimizing") and I didn't
know what PTSD was, but my fantasy life was still aware of what was
happening in my real life.

1 comment:

opal said...

Books contain Worlds within Worlds and it's so easy to hide in them where it's safe.