How Much Do The Books We Read Shape Our Lives?

I grabbed my old copy of These Happy Golden Years last night when the Re-readathon begin. I cast aside the John Crowley's Little, Big which I'd been reading to re-enter the days of my childhood, and long after my husband went to bed I sat reading until the book was finished.

As everyone who's read of the Little House books knows, Laura became a teacher when she was only fifteen years old. Her first experience at the Brewster School twelve miles from her home could have daunted her so much that she never taught again. But, her second assignment at the Perry School required her to teach only three pupils in a brand new building.

In the last days of March the Perry boys painted it white. There never had been a prettier, small schoolhouse.

It stood snowy white on the green land, and its rows of windows shone brightly in the morning sunshine as Laura walked toward it across the short, new grass.

Little Clyde Perry, seven years old, was playing by the doorstep where his First Reader had been carefully laid. He put the key of the new door into Laura's hand and said solemnly, "My father sent you this."

Inside, too, the schoolhouse was bright and shining. The walls of new lumber were clean and smelled fresh. Sunshine streamed in from the eastern windows. Across the whole end of the room was a clean, new blackboard. Before it stood the teacher's desk, a boughten desk, smoothly varnished. It gleamed honey-colored in the sunlight, and on its flat top lay a large Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.

A small clock stood ticking beside the big dictionary; its hands stood at nine o'clock. It must have been wound last night, Laura thought. Nothing could be more complete and perfect than this beautiful little schoolhouse. (p.150-151)

Now, I have never taught only three pupils. I have never taught in a one room schoolhouse. I have never had a little clock ticking on my desk with a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary right beside it. But surely somewhere, in the corners of my mind when I decided I would be a teacher, these words resonated with me. For I knew I wanted to teach when I was eight years old. Twenty eight years of teaching later, I feel certain that the stories of other's lives effected me and my decisions.

Have you had a similar experience? Can you think of a book which so effected your life it quite possibly took you down the very path you now tread? Tell me. And perhaps you'd like to reread it this Re-readathon weekend, too.