salvation through reading

Being part of the reading and writing online community through forums and sites such as Goodreads.com, AuthorsDen, and Amazon Profiles, I find continuing inspiration. Getting to know others who share my passion for literacy, I often find others for whom reading is not only a pastime but also a salvation.

Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs, grew up in Kansas with two younger sisters and a pair of warring parents. She spent much of her childhood in fear, but in books, Kathy found her escape and her calling. She says: “I tell everybody that will listen, books saved me. . . I was scared most of my childhood but by reading books I could escape into the pages and become those characters who were brave, bold, something I was too scared to be as a child. Because of reading and books, I have become brave, bold and now it is my mission in life to bring reading to others. I also feel that if my book touches one person like the book that turned me on to reading, I have accomplished my goal. Reading has saved my life and given me a purpose, my mission to promote literacy.” Kathy’s book The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life will be released in January.

Like Kathy, I grew up afraid—in my case, of my alcoholic father’s rages—and I found comfort and courage in books. My happiest childhood memories are of my mother reading to me while I ate lunch. We called the time Soup and Stories—I’d bring her a stack of Golden Books, and I still don’t know when Mama ever got a chance to eat her lunch. These lines from “The Reading Mother” by Strickland Gillilan could have been written for my mother: “You may have tangible wealth untold: Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be—I had a Mother who read to me.”

I hope to write more about this lifelong love of literacy and would be delighted to hear from others for whom books have been a salvation. If you’d like to share your thoughts, please do (contact: http://poole-carter.info). Rosemary Poole-Carter