People find it a little strange when they find out that I had little love for dolls as a child. After all, any’normal’ girl between the ages of four and ten wants nothing more than a collection of Barbie dolls sitting on a shelf right across her bed.
Personally, I find dolls absolutely creepy. That’s why I never liked sleeping in the bedroom I shared with my little sister, once upon a time when she was going through her Barbie phase - all those eyes, staring at me unblinkingly, were the stuff of nightmares to my mind.
Due to my aversion of dolls, I had to find a substitute - and that substitute was books. By the time I was eleven a majority of the books that occupied the bookshelf in our bedroom were mine. And now, my collection of books needs two shelves to house them all - and this is not including the ones that I had to give away because I wasn’t reading them much anymore.
Books have always held my fancy, and they always will. There is nothing more satisfying to me than to lie down on the sofa with a glass of ice-cold Coke and a good book. It has always been that way, even when I was a little girl.
In those days, my favorite book was - is - Dinotopia by James Gurney. I was a dinosaur buff as a kid, and the day I received Dinotopia was practically heaven-sent. It was a gift to me by my grandmother, from her first trip to the United States. Ever since then, I have treasured the book, and am fiercely determined not to give it away or sell it.
Another book that is a very important part of my childhood is a beautifully illustrated version of Homer’s Odyssey, adapted by Peter Oliver, with illustrations done by Roger Payne. Like Dinotopia, it was a gift to me, though from my parents, and I can still see my name on the inside cover, scrawled there in a child’s careless penmanship. I still have the book with me, even after all these years, and I am not so willing to part with it.
There is something so comforting about re-reading a book that one has loved in childhood. Every time I open Dinotopia, or leaf through the pages of my illustrated Odyssey, I almost feel as if I am reading it for the first time. Even though I know the story from beginning to end, I still feel that sense of wonder that I felt when, as a child of around eight or nine(the ages at which I received the above-mentioned books), I opened the cover and turned to page one.
The books are a little worse for wear now. The edges of the covers and spines are beginning to show the signs of rather rough treatment, and one of the pages of Dinotopia is torn. But still, that makes them all the more valuable to me. The signs of age and some ill-use show that they are well-loved books, one that has been read and re-read over and over again.
Someday, maybe my children, or even grandchildren, will come up to me, with one of these two books in hand, and ask me what it is all about. Who knows?