First Day of School

I don’t know about anyone else, but I always loved the first day of school. I loved gathering all my new books and pencils, making a list of goals to have accomplished by the end of the year, and anticipating looking back and seeing how far I have come. Don’t you just love the thrill of a brand new start, moving forward to better yourself in mind and body? The anticipation of being the best student possible and by the end of the year being miles ahead of your past self. Being excited to work towards something that matters. That is what is beautiful about the first day of school; you get to be excited about life before you have to hunker down and remember how hard it is. If only we could be as excited about school throughout the rest of the school year as well as on the first day.

The Page Master

I watched The Page Master the other day, and though it is not one of my most favorite movies in the world, it had the most fantastic phrase in there when the librarian is giving Richard his library card that I thought to be most magical.

“Consider this your passport to the wonderful, quite unpredictable world of books!”

Though the quote is not talking about books so much as the library card, it gives you a thirst for that wonderful world of books in which anything can happen.

Children’s Books

Do you ever go back and read those books you read as a child? Dr. Seuss, the Bernstein Bears, Clifford and the Little Golden Books. Do you remember curling up on your bed or on the couch to read them or just to look at the pictures? I love the feeling you get when you go back to read them. The same feelings wash over me as I pick them up off the shelf and sit back to read them and notice the same things I noticed when I was little. The texture of the pages, the way the illustrations were drawn. The thing about those books is that they never got old. We still love them even though we are old and mature. I think that is because those books were meant for the whole family to enjoy; from the three year old to the forty year old; we all enjoyed them together.

New Beginnings

I know this is an old one but I thought it was appropriate for the new year.

Don’t you love being confronted with the new? A new book, a new house, a new piece of paper. Each are so full of potential you almost don’t know what to do with it. I love being faced with a new clean sheet of paper. I could do literally anything with it. As a writer, I can make whole new worlds with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. A new book has so many secrets you have yet to uncover, a new year holds so much potential and so many opportunities just for you. It is really amazing when you think about it all. When you wake up in the morning so many things could happen to you and the next day another whole set of new things could happen. I think if we new how many new beginnings we experience everyday of our lives, we might be brighter people.

Books

I love books. I love the way they feel in my hands; the way the sharp cut pages brush against my fingers as I flip through them, the way they smell of ink and paper I love the character they have; for none of them are the same. The way they are made is perfect for every human being. They are easy to carry in the crook of your arm, on top of your head, in your lap an so on. They seem to be made for cuddling with, for sleeping with, for stacking things with, they are the perfect companions for a long day alone. They don’t talk back or make you do things, they just tell you stories with rich enticing words.

Have you ever felt that when you open a book, beautiful and wonderful words and worlds and people come spilling out? Or perhaps when you open a book the rest of the world melts away leaving you in the world that the book holds within? Its as if the book is casting a spell over you, and holding you in. I love it.