My bookshelf
What rhymes with glockenspiel? How do you describe a sea lion’s whiskers? How do ninjas walk, undetected, over water? What’s it like inside the eye of a hurricane? These are the questions populating my head; books helping me find the answers populate my bookshelf.
As a child of the 1970s, I devoured Dr Seuss’ Horton Hatches the Egg, Tove Jansson’s Moomins, and Little Golden books: The Friendly Book, The Golden Egg Book, The Sailor Dog, Good Night Little Bear and Charlie. Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea was a book I read and read and read again. I pondered then, and still do, really, how it was possible for that tiger to drink, not only all the tea in the teapot and all Daddy’s beer, but also all the water out of the tap?
My teenage bookshelf held books about horses. So many horses.
Of the books from my childhood that still peer out, like fond aged aunts, from the shelf, many of them are New Zealand books — no mean feat for that era: Richard Bird in the Bush, Tiberius the Titirangi Mouse and many, many books by Janet Frame, Witi Ihimaera, Maurice Gee, Margaret Mahy and Joy Cowley.
The shelves groan with the weight of nonfiction books, dictionaries, atlases, and texts about natural hazards and disasters, which reflect my academic and life interests in all things geographical and disastrous.
Books on the shelf currently inspiring me are Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic — both encourage us to find what gives us joy and to pursue it bravely. My joy is writing. In getting those ideas, characters and lovely, delicious little phrases that pop up at the most inconvenient moments, out of my head and on to paper. Many of the books on my shelves are withdrawn books from the library and ones I’ve found in op shops. I consider it a privilege to provide them with a comfy shelf and a forever home.
On my reading shelf currently is a book, published in 1972, about authors and illustrators of children’s books of the time. It is fascinating to read about the lives and inspirations of the creators of books I grew up with. I read them then, with a child’s eyes, interested only in the characters and their stories. It is intriguing to reconsider the books now, with an author’s eyes, to discover what their creators saw and did and were inspired by. Overwhelmingly, it seems, the passion and the need to write and draw and create, is just the same as it is for us creating books now. That is both an encouraging thought and a terrifying responsibility.
But for now, I simply write. Oh, and “bearded seal” rhymes quite nicely with “glockenspiel”.