Toys R Us, my father, The Black Cauldron, and re-reading--a story from my reading childhood

When we were living overseas (my father was in the Foreign Service), every summer my sisters and I were taken to stay with our grandparents in Arlington, Va.  My mother came for a bit too, but most summers my father stayed at work.  A treat every year was a visit to Toys R Us, but I don't really remember the particulars, except for one special visit.*  My father was there for a bit the summer I was ten, and on a whim he took me (I think just me) there, and said he would buy me a book.  It is the only time I remember him ever buying me a book (he wasn't especially interested in taking us shopping, nor was he especially interested in doing things that didn't interest him), so it was a Special Thing.  I stood in front of all the richness on display in the back right corner of the Bailey's Crossroads Toys R Us, and couldn't choose.  Growing impatient, he plucked one from the shelf, and I acquiesced, not wanting him to be annoyed.  The book was The Black Cauldron, by Lloyd Alexander, and I found the cover unappealing (I still do).  I bet the oddness of it was what attracted my father.

That afternoon, during the time slot when my sisters and I were all told to stay quietly in our rooms to rest (I had an old fashioned childhood), I began to read.  I'm the one in the top bunk.  The Black Cauldron starts with a huge number of characters all gathering together to start an adventure, and I had no clue who any of them were, and I was confused and dubious.  But I kept going, journeying with Taran and co. through the marshes and on to the horror and tragedy of the ending....and my mind was set on fire.  It was unlike anything I'd ever read.

Of course I then hungered for the other books in the series, and they came my way eventually.  But because I wanted them and knew they existed, they weren't as special.  Though The Black Cauldron ended up being only my third favorite (after Taran Wanderer and The High King), the power of that reading experience was unrivaled.  I can still watch the book unfold in my mind's eye, and feel again the emotions each part of it called out of me.  And because the book made such an impact, the memory of my father taking the time to buy it for me (probably he just wanted a reason to get out of the house, but one takes what one gets) is still crystal clear as well.

And that's one of the joys of re-reading- not only do you get the story again, but you get to revisit the self you were when you first read the book.  Because the grown-ups never bought me nearly as many books as I would have liked, I can remember almost all the book gifts of my childhood, and each takes me back to a particular part of my life, with a palimpsest of memories overlaying the actual story.  I'm awfully glad to have all the many books I have now, but when they aren't miracles, coming unexpected and unasked for, with unappealing covers by authors you've never heard of, and which then turn out to be brilliant, it's not quite the same.

So I'm very grateful to Toys R Us for stocking books, and to my father for taking me to buy one, and to my grandmother who insisted on the rest period after lunch, and of course to Lloyd Alexander and all the other authors who all combined to make that a lovely summer.  My grandparents house was sold and demolished, and now the store is gone too, and I feel a little sad about that. 

My first copy of The Black Cauldron must have been read to death, because I now have a modern paperback, but I still have my old copies of the other four. I don't remember the particulars of getting them, because I think I had read library copies, so getting my own copies wasn't as memorable.  It's interesting to see that I got them all at different times, and that there was a period of tremendous book inflation in the late 1970s that clearly shows the order in which I got them.  They are all Dell Yearlings.  The Book of Three was 1.25, The High King was 1.50, Taran Wanderer was 1.75, and then there's a big jump to 3.25 for The Castle of Llyr.

This June, the last summer of being able to plan my older son's life (he goes to college this fall) we are going to Wales, which I have always wanted to visit since reading the books, and so I should probably re-read them all again.....

*This is not actually true.  Thinking it over, I also remember the specific little Beyer horses I got on multiple occasions, in particular Native Dancer, a beautiful grey one (the little horse section was about three rows in from the left hand wall of the store).  We would scrunch up a particular area rug in the living room to make an island with caves for all our little horses, and it was a lovely game....inspired by other books I was reading at the time, all of the Black Stallion series and all of Marguerite Henry....all of which I still have even though goodness knows if I will ever want to re-read all the Black Stallion books ever again.