Fabulous Fiction Firsts #266, and other essential summer reading

Thu, 05/26/2011 - 4:59pm by muffy

Summer Reading is just around the corner. It is time to seriously map out your game plan. Here are just a couple of suggestions for you.

Bibliophiles and librarians far and wide are waiting with baited breath for Rebecca Makkai's debut - The Borrower. 26 year-old accidental children's librarian (Hannibal, MO) Lucy Hull (English Literature, Mount Holyoke) finds herself hijacked by 10 year-old Ian Drake (with possible gender identity issues - an important plot element), a voracious reader who is precocious and persuasive as he is vulnerable and manipulative. The pair zigzag their way across the country, Thelma and Louise-styled, just ahead of the law (Lucy is sure) and the dangerous-looking man on their tail (KGB?)

I ask that you check your critical self and anxiety at the door and give our Lucy some rope. All will be revealed in good time and will affirm once and for all, that books save lives. Enough said. Just hand me the box of tissues, please.

On the subject of tissues... there was not one dry eye in the audience when Alice Ozma spoke of her deeply affecting memoir The Reading Promise : my father and the books we shared * , back in January and it has stayed with me all this time. (Watch Alice on YouTube).

In 4th grade, Alice and her single father (a beloved elementary school librarian) made a promise to read aloud together for 100 consecutive nights. From L. Frank Baum to Dickens, from J.K. Rowling to Shakespeare, the "streak" continued for eight years through the night before Alice left for college. Each chapter highlights a significant event, a book they particularly treasured, and the life lessons learned along the way. Poignant and beautifully written.

The Reading Promise would make a perfect graduation gift for the readers in your life. And if you are lucky to have youngsters still in your care, this might inspire you to make a promise of your own.

* = Starred review