Apart from improving vocabulory skills, communication skills, improving empathy, focus, memory, books have direct connection with your brain.
If you connect with the author and the book, you become a part of the plot and get into the mind of author.
Few decades back, parents would try to inculcate book reading interest in the their children. I was given Enid Blyton on a birthday and for next few years it became a constant companion.
Starting with Noddy series, I soon got hooked on to famous Five series. There were 21 books in this series and one after the other they went on becomming a part of the personal library.
Apart from the adventures and the lucid narration style of books, the describtion of picnics and food lured me the most.
In all the 21 of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books, Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmothy (woof) enjoy their food on their frequent picnics.
“There were great chunks of new-made cream cheese, potted meat, ripe tomatoes grown in Mrs Lucy’s brother’s greenhouse, gingerbread cake fresh from the oven, shortbread, a great fruit cake with almonds crowding the top, biscuits of all kinds, and six jam sandwiches!”
Tomato sandwiches, lemonade, tinned sardines, melt-in-the-mouth shortbread, lettuces, radishes, Nestlé milk, ginger beer, tins of pineapple chunks, squares of chocolate.
The Famous Five set a standard in picnics that has never been equalled. At 12-13 years of age, above description of food was enough to generate saliva in mouth. Many of the items were not familiar but that didn’t matter. The description along with sketches of Famous Five sitting with their picnic baskets was enough to pass few hours dreaming and creating situations and stories of our own.
Then in one of the books someone said that “I don’t know why, but the meals we have on picnics always taste so much nicer than the ones we have indoors“
I remember this sentence impacting so much that we would carry our hamper of sandwhiches and fries ( the menu would be as near as the one described in books to give a real feel) go to sea side, walk on the beach, find a secluded spot where we would be little hidden, munch on our hamper, observe fishing boats at a distance, scheme a plot in mind that perhaps there are smugglers on the boat and story formation would begin.
In a small town, where there was not much to do, Enid Blyton made our childhood memorable. Though she passed away when I was just three, her memory will always be cherished in mind. This article is dedicated to her memory. May she continue writing the same way in whatever world she is in and bring joy to innumerable children.
Sweet memories of childhood.