For youngsters in search of a role model
Reading is good for you.
The book that captured me this time is one for school-age readers: “The Story Seeker” by Kristin O’Donnell Tubb (Henry Holt and Co., 255 pp., $16.99).
It’s about a young person in 1920s New York City who wants to become a reporter (And she lived in the New York Public Library. True story).
I’m not a young person, but I have been a reporter, so I can relate.
And not that I’m a girl, like protagonist Viviani, but as a card-carrying guy I line right up with her enthusiasm:
“Sometimes there’s this … feeling … of being a part of something bigger than yourself. It’s almost as though your eyes can see beyond the horizon, as though your spirit can reach beyond the confines of your skin.” That’s how Viviani felt, walking toward the New York Times building and her future.
When I was a kid the boys were the heroes — Frank and Joe Hardy, Batman, virtually all the “cowboys.” Annie Oakley was an anomaly. Now women, too, are called heroes.
And in our era, in which so much depends on steady hands and ambitious youths, brains are in the ascendant.
Meanwhile we still need the news, especially when it is bad.
Viviani, echoing John Muir: “Sometimes you have to look at things upside down to see them for what they truly are.”
That lets us know we have to do something.
“The Story Seeker” is fun to read and at the same time instructional. And there’s more: the author’s “The Story Collector.”
Any youngster in search of a role model need look no farther than 11-year-old Viviani Fedeler, bonding quickly to a world that sorely needs witnesses for integrity and determined access to the truth in the wider world.
Lead on and rock on. So much to be done!
Bill Ruehlmann is professor emeritus of journalism and communications at Virginia Wesleyan University.