Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
I'm not sure I understand this. If you didn't understand it, what were you hooked on?
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I was hooked on a heavy volume titled The Gilbert Shakespeare from earliest memory. I adored it before even beginning school when my older siblings wrapped themselves in sheets and "put on plays" from it. My love for the musty smell, the crisp and yellowed pages, the pictures, and the hard-to-lift heft of the book were a primary inspiration to learn to read. I understood so little of what I read that I came to also love the Charles and Mary Lamb Shakespeare because those stories, which were better than the Grimm Brothers tales(which we also owned), explained it all to me.
Children can feel the magic even without the ability to explain it.
Edit: I laughed upon re-reading this and remembering that those children in love with a Shakespeare they barely understood were putting on their plays on a remote Montana farm with no indoor plumbing, no television or radio, and inadequately heated by an old wood stove.