In 1961, at the beginning of the summer when I was 11 years old, I decided to make a list of every library book I read. Extremely self-conscious about my body that was much more developed than other girls my age , I spent much of that summer lying in my bed reading books. I had my first menstrual period the previous August when I was still 10 years old and felt that my childhood was over way too soon. I was tall for my age and went on my first diet at 10 years old, thinking I was overweight because I weighed more than almost everyone in my 5th grade class. I stopped going out to play with the neighborhood kids and started watching "American Bandstand" on television. That may have been when I began taking long solitary walks with our family dog, part of my unsuccessful strategy for losing weight. I started reading books for teenage girls, but my favorite books were those that took me completely away from my life and societal expectations and into lives that I wished were mine and to places I wished I could go, including other worlds. I did not want to live in the world I was growing up in.
Looking at this long list of books, there are many of which I have absolutely no recollection. Some I only remembered when I saw the author's name. The ones I remember vividly were about children and horses, dogs, magic and other worlds.
Some of the books must have been quite short because it appears that I read over 100 books between mid-June and early September. I do remember that there was an element of competition in connection with this list. My sense of self-esteem was very low but I was proud of the fact that I was good at reading and could read the books from the library that were designated as above my grade level. I thought that it would be wonderful to be a writer or an illustrator and, using small notepads, wrote two handwritten books, both about horses, one of which had a few illustrations. They were very much based on books I had read about children and horses.
I'm wondering if any of you read some of the books in my summer of 1961 book list.
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And then there was the wonderful music on the radio. I couldn't sing or dance and felt horribly inadequate in every social way, but I knew the lyrics to all these songs and felt all the emotions they evoked in my 11-year-old heart.
