There’s something about the beginning of the Summer Reading Program at the Library that brings back a flood of childhood memories. When I was in elementary school, my friends and I liked to join the local library’s Summer Reading “Club” (as it was called back in the day). Summer Reading Clubs at my local library were essentially competitions to see who could read the most books over the summer. There was always some kind of large game board tacked up on the wall in the Children’s Room. When you joined the club, you received a game piece made of heavy construction paper or cardboard, cut into the shape of some object that related to the summer reading theme. You put your name on it and you got to move your game piece forward one step toward the finish line for each book you read. (For example your game piece might be a fish and the goal would be to reach the pond.) I was not “bookish”, but I was a good reader, and I usually made the finish line in just a few weeks. By then, I was ready to move on to other summer fun – swimming, riding bikes, kiddie matinees, softball, and “let’s pretend” games with the neighborhood kids.
But my summer reading didn’t stop after I
was finished with the Summer Reading Club, because I had the great good fortune to be a child during what has become known as “The Silver Age of the Comic Book”. Most comic books included three or four illustrated stories, usually featuring one main character along with their circle of chums: Little Lulu, Little Audrey, Little Lotta, Baby Huey, Richie Rich, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Archie and Friends, Popeye, Felix the Cat, Tubby, and Dot. Then there were the super heroes: Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Green Hornet, and Wonder Woman, which were apparently scrubbed-up remnants of “The Golden Age of the Comic Book”. Those weren’t my favorites, but I read them anyway. They were all marvelously silly - the junk food of children’s literature, and l loved them!
My library did not carry comic books, possibly because of their flimsy construction, but I suspect there might have been more to it. I never asked. We knew that teachers did not consider comics to be suitable material for book reports, and no explanation as to why was necessary. Comic books only cost a dime, and could be found at any newsstand, drug store or grocery market. New ones seemed to come out every week. By the end of the summer, I usually managed to amass a good assortment of them. Comics were perfect for kiddie commerce because parents did not care in the least if you swapped three dollar’s worth of comic books for two cent’s worth of marbles. They didn’t even care if you just gave your old comics away or put them in the trash. Comic books were just off the parental radar. They were, in a word, wonderful.
For better or for worse, comic books, as I knew them in “The Silver Age”, are not a part of today’s childhood experience. But thinking about them makes me feel nostalgic for the benignly unsupervised, wasteful reading experiences of my own childhood summers. How I emerged a grown- up person who numbers “reading for pleasure” among her favorite pastimes is a mystery. Or is it?
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