Your Secret Read

You’ve been rumbled.

   A piece of rare post has plopped on your doormat. An almost illegible address, yours, scrawled at a slant.

   You open it with a pick of the corner, and you unfold the single sheet, for your eyes to hover, horrified, over the stuck down letters recycled from the Gazette.

   “I know what you read in secret. Pay up. Big, big money - or else I’ll tell everyone. Everyone.”

   You climb to the hiding place in the loft where your treasured Read is stored. 

   No worries.

   It’s still there, tucked under an old record player missing a needle. Remember them?

   What would happen if anyone were to find out you enjoy reading…

   Dr Seuss’ The Cat In The Hat? Heinlein’s juvenile Have Space Suit Will Travel?

   There are books we cherish way beyond what is fashionable. Books that nourished our psyches the way the food on the table nourished our bodies. Childhood books.

   I do have copies of the Heinlein and Seuss but not Helen Bannerman’s infamous classic. Look her up and you’ll see why not. Though hers was the first book I loved, and knew I loved it. How could Tigers turn into butter? The capitalisation is for real. For my four year-old self they weren't tigers, they were Tigers.

   I also have copies of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time and Catherine Storr’s Marianne Dreams. Special mention must be made of Johanna Spyn’s Heidi and The Swiss Family Robinson by Johan David Wyss. Alas, I didn’t read them in the original German. Then there were the nights spent feasting on Danny The Champion Of The World - you should know who wrote that. And I’m embarrassed to recall walking the playground reading Arabelle and Mortimer by Joan Aiken. Nevermore!

   What’s your childhood favourite?