The Big Fresh May 6, 2017 Mentors Who Matter

My mother took me every Saturday morning to our small local library and left me there for three hours to read and then choose a book. Once, when I was maybe 7 or 8, I picked “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (because the cover had a picture of a submarine), but the librarian refused to let me check it out. “That’s too hard for you,” she said. On the way home, when I told my mother, she screeched the car, drove back, charged in and screamed: “Never tell a child a book is too hard for him! And never this child!” She grabbed the book, marched out and, once home, made me read it. And of course, it was too hard for me. But I plowed through. I always say that was the day I became a future writer, because if this book thing was important enough for my mother to browbeat a librarian, it must be worthwhile.

I was astonished by a few things. I’m always struck by how times have changed. I’m about the same age as Mitch, and free-range childhood for our generation was the norm. My happiest days of childhood were spent roaming libraries on my own for hours, or back roads on my bike with friends from sun-up till the dinner hour our moms told us to be home by or else. We’re inching toward summer when children will burst out of the school doors, and it’s sad that so few will have that magic combination of solitude and choice.

But what captured my attention even more than Mitch’s roaming was the fierce advocacy of his mother. We all need someone who believes that strongly in our ability to read whatever we like — the harder the book the better, if it’s something we desperately want to read. People who love books almost always mention a mentor who loved books, and found a way to transfer that love. It may be a parent, it may be a teacher. That one person leads you to that one book that turns you on to reading and writing for life.

This week we look at links between mentor texts and mentoring young readers and writers. Plus more as always — enjoy!