October 29, 2009

Its own mythology

“Every family in which children are read to, and where books are part of the furniture and the reading of them part of life, must have its own mythology, one that has arisen out of early books. Characters become companions, they help form the imagination, they people a child’s inner landscape. Alice in Wonderland and the White Rabbit, the Red Queen and the Caterpillar were far more to me than invented characters in a storybook. They still are. Looking at the children’s picture books now, I realize that they are my books too, they became as much part of my inner landscape as of theirs.”– from Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill