When I was young, I didn’t really like reading. I read the Garfield comic books and occassionally, I read choose your own adventure books. For whatever reason, reading didn’t interest me. I can’t even remember really avidly reading until I was in high school.
One Christmas, during my high school years, my parents gave me Anne of Green Gables as a gift. I poured into that book and became hungry to read more. I credit that book for igniting my desire to read.
For those of you who may not know, the character in this book is red headed. That’s probably one the reasons I connected so easily to her. Anne was also an imaginative character. She would over exagrate events or the possiblities of things to come. She would speak in ways that showed me she was trying so hard to be good and acceptable for the people who adopted her. Like me though, her red hair couldn’t hold back her temper. When she was hot, she was hot!
But, that’s not why I want to be like Anne. I want that freedom of imagination back. I want to believe the world is better than maybe it really it is. I want the simplicity of a life full of happiness.
Now, before you say “K, you’re a writer so you have the freedom of imagination.” Yes, but no. I can and do imagine anything. I can scare myself into anxiety faster than the white rabbit who’s always late for a very important date. However, I don’t put it all on paper. I don’t share everything in my mind. I don’t let my imaginaiton run as wild as it could because I fear it will cause my freedom of imagination to go away.
Make sense? Confused? Let me put it this way….
I am a writer. I am a story teller. I love to spin something on the spot for my students to keep them engaged. I love creating fiction that has the power to empower. However, because of current events, I find myself wondering if it’s really worth it to put my stories on the page. Is it worth all the pain and effort it takes to create the story if one day my books will be placed on a list of banned books? Is it worth people passing my books by because they are offended when the story is fiction? How do my words endanger someone’s mind?
What is being forgotten as book after book after book is being banned is that the author of said book was writing according to what they knew at the time. Their era was more different than ours and we are condemming their brillant minds for writing what they knew.
Laura Ingles Wilder’s name was on an award until it was voted to take it off due the content of her writing. She lived during a hard time! Her family was part of a new frontier. There were unknowns to deal with we still don’t know about today. She did as any author does, and spun her experience into a story. We loved her until someone hated her. That is not right or fair to her and the stories she wrote.
We’re living in fear of a lot of things these days. What we read should not be one of them. Reading is an escape. It’s a freedom. It’s not the danger it is being made out to be. Imagination is what got most people to where they are. We wouldn’t have lights if they hadn’t been imagined. We wouldn’t have technology if it hadn’t been imagined. We wouldn’t have anything if we didn’t embrace our imagination.
Oh, to live in Anne’s world and let my imagination run wild!
