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Reading and Running Away

© Alessia Cowee

I've often wondered about the perfect spot to read a book. Where is it? Does it exist for each one of us, uniquely? Perhaps it is different in every season. Unless you live in Northern California, as I do, where there are no seasons! I imagine these perfect places:

In winter, while it is snowing, the great room of a colonial home, fire blazing in the hearth, children playing quietly in the flickering firelight, as the silent flakes fall just outside the window.

In spring, under the shade of an apple tree in blossom, the sweet smell wafting on a light, warm breeze. My kids play hide and seek among the tree branches, laughing and calling, their voices evoking a sense of magic, deepening the enjoyment of each page I turn.

In summer, sitting on the rocky coastline, ocean spray dampening my hair. Here the sounds are seagulls calling overhead, and the crash of the waves as they break against the shoreline. My husband and children are distant figures, hunting shells along the beach. I melt deeply into the moment of each page, forgetting time and space, remembering only the wind and breaker mist on my cheek and the words in the book.

In autumn, my perfect reading spot would be an old gothic library. Rain drums on the windows, as I curl up in a secluded window seat, shelves and shelves of books my solitary companions. Occasionally, the howling of the wind disturbs my repose and I stand, prowling the deserted rooms, listening to stirring echoes of long-ago patrons.

Reading is an escape, an adventure, a retreat, deep into the heart of another place, time, experience, life. When I first read "From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler", winner of the 1968 Newbery Medal, I longed to run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art myself, as Claudia and Jamie had.

It seemed the quintessential reading/hiding place; steeped in history, mystery and artwork. I too, imagined hiding in the bathrooms waiting for the guards and the staff to leave for the day, listening to the drip, drip, drip, from the faucet. I pictured myself strolling the hallowed hallways and corridors, searching for the perfect place to lay my head for the night. Oh and to solve an age-old mystery as well! What could be more wonderful! As time passed, and I read the book again and again, for I can never read a book I love only once, I began to see myself walking through the museum, notebook in hand, learning everything there was to know about everything. Claudia and Jamie had aspired to this as well. It was then that I discovered who I truly wanted to be, in E.L. Konigsburg's exceptional tale, not Claudia or Jamie, not the museum curator, but Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler herself!

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