Lost Books of Childhood

One of the unexpected pleasures of this internet age has been rediscovering the books of my childhood. Like many people in the fifties and sixties, our family relied on the public library for books. Until recently, I thought many of those books had disappeared. Now, however, through sites like AbeBooks.com and even Amazon, it’s possible to find a dog-eared copy and have it delivered to my own door. How can these small booksellers afford to sell books for a penny, or even a dollar? Do they gain that much on the $3.99 shipping fee? Or are they just book lovers who can’t bear to destroy a book, happy to send it instead to a loving home?

A number of those books have made it to my home lately. It’s interesting which ones I’ve sought out. Sometimes it’s a concept I remember. My sister and brother and I were fascinated by The Upside-Down Boy. Amazingly, one day a set of footprints appeared on the sloped ceiling above our beds – just like in the book! Fifty years later, I found a copy of the original Dorothy Ivens book (from 1958) and gave it to my mom, who remembered my dad stenciling the prints above our heads as we slept.

Often it’s the story and characters that matter the most. Carol Ryrie Brink is best known for Caddie Woodlawn, a pioneer story that’s stayed in print for years. But I have much stronger memories of two other very different books. In Baby Island, two young girls are shipwrecked with four babies. It’s the ultimate girls’ adventure story, a parody of desert island books – there’s even a footprint with a missing toe. We read this to Rhiannon when she was five, her first chapter book. (As it happens, we started it in a hut by Lake Oku in Africa, drawing in various biologists, but that’s another story.) I’ve since given copies to several other five-year-olds.

The other Brink book, The Headland (checked out more than once from the library), is quite different. It’s a long 1955 novel about five children who find themselves in northern France as World War II begins. The story of how the war changed their relationships stayed with me for years, becoming part of my frame of reference about how men and women might live in the world. When I recently rediscovered the book, I found it still just as compelling as an adult – as all the best teen novels are. My daughter Emily, now doing a PhD in English, found it a satisfying read as well.

It’s the place that’s drawn me back to High Trail, by Vivian Breck. When I first read this book as a child in Oregon, I hoped one day to try something called “backpacking.” Breck’s books were among the few adventure stories for girls. There were some about horses, and one about a river trip, but High Trail – published in 1948 – was the one I remembered best. When I tracked it down, I found it was set in my own back yard, in Sequoia National Park.

As World War II ends, Chloe and her father finally go on a long-delayed backpacking trip. But west of Mt. Whitney, her father breaks a leg, and it’s up to Chloe to go for help. As Chloe struggles east over the flank of the mountain, an early storm comes in. Luckily, she encounters two young men, recently back from the war, and for the rest of the book, the three work together to survive the storm and find help for Chloe’s dad.

The book appealed to me because it was about a young girl in the wilderness. From what my maps show, it’s geographically accurate. Breck writes of birds and plants I know. While I haven’t traveled the specific trails in the book – Chloe, unlike me, is young and slim and long-legged – I’ve been nearby. So in one sense, I’m still fascinated by this book because it’s set near a place I know and love.

I’m interested both in what’s changed and what’s stayed the same since 1948. I suspect new trails have been added; a Sequoia historian would know. Chloe and her dad gather wood to build a giant fire against a rock; these days we rely on little stoves. When Chloe needs to rappel down a ledge, the men help her wrap the rope around her body, and down she goes – no harness or special rappelling devices. In fact, that’s how I first rappelled myself, in a local quarry; as I read the book, I could still feel the rope sliding roughly along my body.

As an English teacher, I’m also interested in feminist issues. The fact that Chloe is out on the trail at all was unusual for the times. Most teen girls’ books then – and even now – don’t involve wilderness. Chloe is adventurous, but she’s hiking with her dad. Mom stays home doing whatever moms do – she doesn’t merit much mention. What were the forces affecting both Chloe and her mom in those days, and how did mothers affect their daughters?

It may seem surprising that a man in his late twenties would be a suitable romantic interest for a teenager. These days, that would be odd in a teen novel. But when I look at my parents’ generation, many of those marriages involve age differences of at least seven or eight years.

I’ve often wondered about the women of my father’s age. They watched their classmates go off to die in the war, some of them keeping the offices and shipyards going as Rosie the Riveter – and then the survivors came home to marry young girls just out of their teens. What happened to those older women? I suppose they were the spinster teachers of my childhood, the single ladies doing good works. But what were they really thinking? Where would I find their stories?

And what was the effect on all those young women of marrying men so much older and more experienced? Did it reinforce the man’s traditional privileged role? My mother, with just a Bachelor’s degree, was a faculty wife at age twenty-three. It was only when I hit my teens that she started library school – having first ensured the future of the local library by helping to orchestrate a funding campaign.

High Trail is a teen novel that’s made me ask questions on various levels. I was always a voracious reader; in eighth grade, I read 123 books (which shows how exciting life was). Along with all those stories, I absorbed ideas about men and women and how they were to behave. I was liberated enough, even then, to appreciate books where girls resisted expectations.

I also learned about places – among them, the Sierra Range. Before applying for my current job, I knew nothing of Visalia. But when the rangers bring Chloe’s father out on a stretcher, they take him down through Mineral King to the Visalia hospital. Apparently, I have been here, at least through stories – I just didn’t remember. It makes me wonder what else I’ve forgotten, and how my early reading was affecting me even before I even knew it.