The making of a librarian, pt. 1

Chatting to Morgan of explodedlibrary the other day got me thinking about the libraries I had access to as a child. We were talking about what influenced our career choices; in my case I’d have to say that childhood access to libraries doesn’t make a difference. This is because I had very little access to the library at all, as a child growing up in Malaysia.

Perhaps the situation has changed, but back then, there were no public libraries in the town where I was born. There was no library at the primary school I went to. This is not to say I was completely starved of books and reading material, of course. As soon as I realised I could read, I also realised our house was full of books. (The story of how I realised I could read is one of my fondest memories. Should I tell it here? Maybe later.)

Where was I? Oh yes, the house seemed to be full of books. Home is where my love of books and reading developed. We had a set of classics that included Robin Hood, Treasure Island, Black Beauty, Heidi, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and Tom Sawyer. Tom Sawyer seemed miraculously free and irresponsible to me. And reading Heidi made me pine for a house on a mountain. The only one I never read was King Arthur, for some reason.

We had a set of science books – I remember pictures showing you how to tell the time by looking for where your shadow was, how to start a fire using a magnifying glass, and how to prove that the earth is round (I looked in vain for a horizon – couldn’t find one in suburban Petaling Jaya, too many buildings). Dad also had a book on wild animals – full of lurid pictures including lions devouring zebras, an anaconda squeezing the life out of a poor goat, and a whale being attacked by whalers. The text was very sedate and descriptive, about the natural habitats of these creatures, but the pictures used to give me nightmares. I’d love to find it again but all I remember (besides the pictures) was that the book had a red cover.

I also read the Greek myths in a children’s version, and loved the tales of the Trojan horse, Medusa, and Theseus and the minotaur in the labyrinth, although I never learned how to pronounce Hercules or Achilles until many years later (they were her-cools and ah-chillies in my mind). We had lots of Enid Blyton – the Secret Seven, Famous Five, Twins at St Clares, Magic Faraway Tree and Malory Towers… and later I had great fun when Malay language translations of some of these works became available and I could compare them side by side.

There was also a stack of Look and Learn magazines. Look and Learn was a British children’s magazine filled with educational articles on history, archaeology, geography, current affairs and my favourite bit, tales of the Trigan Empire. A graphic serial, The Trigan Empire was based on an imaginary world set on a distant planet, full of stories of treachery and aliens, which I don’t really remember very well – what I remember is the artwork, which I loved.

Dad had a set of Reader’s Digests, including issues collected from way before I was born. Back then the Reader’s Digest was a lot more interesting to me than it is now. I loved the works of art on the back cover – they’re covered with ads now. (Pity.) Word Power and Laughter, The Best Medicine were my favourite sections of the magazine. I used to go through each Word Power and stress myself out because there were so many words I didn’t know! I also enjoyed the gory tales of survival the magazine sometimes featured – like the story of the man who was almost sliced in half by a power saw and lived, or the one about the man who lost an arm in an accident on a busy freeway and lived – all appealed to my fervid imagination.

What else? We also had a few of the Three Investigators books, and a range of Scholastic books – I can’t remember all the titles but I do remember really enjoying them. And the series of stories to illustrate the meanings behind various Malay peribahasa (proverbs, I suppose). My favourite was air dicincang takkan putus. Malay version of blood is thicker than water.

Looking back I’m really glad there was such a variety of stuff to read at home. I wonder what else I would have read if I’d had access to a library…

*Enid Blyton cover from enidblyton.net

Categories: reading, books, librarian