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truepennyThe discussion of my previous [now friends-locked] post on the subject of advice one would give one's twelve-year-old self reminded me of a quote from Margaret Mahy's The Catalogue of the Universe, which I paraphrased. Sine the quote has sparked interest and discussion, I thought I'd better do the thing properly, and let Mahy's words speak for themselves:
He wished there were some way he could reach back to his five-year-old self, optimistically looking forward to school and learning to read, still confident he was naturally loveable, and tell him, "Don't worry too much! It turns out all right." But there was no way it could be done. He had had to live, would always have to live through everything to reach this morning, and now he had reached it he couldn't simply stop there and enjoy it. Perhaps somewhere ahead a future self was walking past the school, wanting to reach him at this very moment in order to warn him. Tycho stopped and made Angela stop too, and kissed her and made her kiss him back, for he did not want to hear any warning, telling him not to be too happy.
(Mahy 174-5)
I don't remember when I first read this book, or my other favorite of hers, The Changeover. But I think I got both books via the school's mail-order book club thingy (anybody else remember that? I got a whole stack of those Sunfire historical romances that way), and that was a junior high phenomenon. Certainly, the battered condition of the paperback suggests that it is both old and well-read.
Time to get out the booktape and practice a little home-mummification.
---
WORKS CITED
Mahy, Margaret. The Catalogue of the Universe. 1985. New York: Point-Scholastic Inc., 1987.
He wished there were some way he could reach back to his five-year-old self, optimistically looking forward to school and learning to read, still confident he was naturally loveable, and tell him, "Don't worry too much! It turns out all right." But there was no way it could be done. He had had to live, would always have to live through everything to reach this morning, and now he had reached it he couldn't simply stop there and enjoy it. Perhaps somewhere ahead a future self was walking past the school, wanting to reach him at this very moment in order to warn him. Tycho stopped and made Angela stop too, and kissed her and made her kiss him back, for he did not want to hear any warning, telling him not to be too happy.
(Mahy 174-5)
I don't remember when I first read this book, or my other favorite of hers, The Changeover. But I think I got both books via the school's mail-order book club thingy (anybody else remember that? I got a whole stack of those Sunfire historical romances that way), and that was a junior high phenomenon. Certainly, the battered condition of the paperback suggests that it is both old and well-read.
Time to get out the booktape and practice a little home-mummification.
---
WORKS CITED
Mahy, Margaret. The Catalogue of the Universe. 1985. New York: Point-Scholastic Inc., 1987.
