The Books that Matter

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, my grandson, a college student, asked me what book I had read which changed my life? I was stymied. Which part of my life? Changed how? And does that include the books I found under my brother’s bed, hidden from our parents? Or the 60 adolescent literature books I had to read in a single semester for my English major? The six or seven large bookcases scattered around my house attest to the fact that I love books, but after a good deal of thought, I realized the books that stand out to me are those which I saw change the lives of people around me.

When I taught Junior Honors English, we used a huge American Literature survey textbook which would have qualified as a low-budget defensive weapon if a student had been wearing his backpack and was mugged in a dark alley. Its first entries were excerpts from early colonial diaries. One morning my students filed in after I had assigned them to read a piece by Massachusetts’ first governor, William Bradford. One kid was so fired up about the assignment, he started talking immediately after the tardy bell rang.

“Mrs. Voorhies, Mrs. Voorhies.” His words came pouring out, and his voice rose as he became even more excited. “You won’t believe what happened!” I encouraged him to stop and take a breath. “For generations in my family, we have had this story handed down about a kid, an indentured servant, who fell off the Mayflower in a terrible storm as it crossed the Atlantic from England. He should have died, but he grabbed a rope from a rigging which the ferocious winds had ripped apart and was hanging out into the sea over a railing. The boy was half drowned, but he managed to hold to that piece of the torn sail until one of the crew spotted him and pulled him out of the water.

“My mom had come to a dead end when she was working on our family genealogy because no one knew this boy’s name. But he’s here.” He pointed to his textbook. “Right here! Governor Bradford mentions the boy who fell overboard in his diary. I found him! My mother is so excited.”

I was excited, too. Even more so when, last summer, a member of my own extended family did a Zoom family history presentation on “The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower,” a children’s book suggested for use in elementary school classrooms when students study early American history. John Howland had 10 children and, according to professional genealogists, more than five MILLION living descendants today. Including me.

Late one afternoon some years later, my Advanced Placement seniors had been assigned to read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It is a small but difficult text which cannot be simply breezed through for the highlights of the plot, so I always braced for complaints when we began discussions about the book. That particular class was fairly small—only 15 or 16 students. They jostled one another as they came in and sat down. While I was still checking the roll, one of them leaned across his desk to a buddy and said, “What do you think the author meant in that section where . . .?”

His friend replied, but a student across the room yelled out, “No that’s not what it means at all.” A bit of a melee ensued as every student chimed in about his or her understanding of the text. I sat quietly on my stool in front of the room and let them go. For almost ninety minutes they argued back and forth, pulling out their copies of the book and reading passages in support or opposition for someone else’s ideas. Once or twice, they stopped talking and referred a question to me. I threw a question of my own back at them, and off they went again.

I don’t remember if the Heart of Darkness was part of that year’s Advanced Placement exam or not. It wasn’t really important. Unfolding before me was a group of kids who didn’t need me anymore.

As a teacher I only had three goals: one, teach students to love learning; two, give them the skills they need to learn effectively; and three, do not become an obstacle in their path to progress. That day I watched it happen. My students leaped beyond my classroom and left me behind. It’s not the books which change people’s lives. It’s the readers.