Guest Blogger #3 - Marsha Palitz-Elliott

Why do we read books?   

For some of us, books provide our principal source of 

information about things, places and people.  We read to be 

informed.  For others, we look to books for entertainment – for 

those laugh-out-loud moments and sweet segments that we 

enjoy and recall with pleasure.   

Books are travel agents, transporting us to different lands and 

different times.  Books can broaden our perspective and deepen 

our understanding of self and others.  They can provide a quiet 

respite from a chaotic and unsettling world.  

Some books challenge our paradigms and force us to look at the 

world differently. 

Others remind us that we are not alone; that there are people in 

the world like us, and while the specifics of their life experience 

may differ from ours, their experience of life rings true. 

In this era of sound bites and misinformation, broadcast 24/7,  

a constant stream of messages sent over the internet, Facebook, 

Tweets, and Twitters with little attention to facts, style, 

grammar, or even capital letters for god’s sake, to hold a book, 

especially one you have borrowed, turning the pages slowly, as 

others did before you, soaking in the words, enjoying the 

pictures they inspire, appreciating the craft as well as the 

content, seems almost counter-cultural:  a political statement, of 

sorts, like the collective action outraged librarians took when 

they refused to adhere to the Patriot Act requirement that they 

share their patrons’ reading records – ready to destroy the 

computerized subscriber lists in resistance to government 

intrusion.   

Our choice of book is a private matter.  We are free to read what 

we choose.  And, what we read helps to inform who we are. 

A year or so ago, while wandering in one of my favorite 

independent bookstores – The Stand near Union Square in 

Manhattan, New York – a book caught my attention. 

(I believe books sometimes call out to you.  Anyway, this book 

did.) 

The Book That Changed My Life edited by Roxanne J. Coady and 

Joy Johannessen, published by Gotham Books, New York, 2006. 

It features seventy-one writers who name the book that most 

changed each of their lives, and how and why it impacted them 

as it did.  What a gem!  

First the reader is presented with a fabulous list of books worth 

reading (or re-reading, as the case may be). Second, through 

these short essays we are introduced to the writing of seventy- 

one authors, inspiring more additions to our personal ‘must- 

read’ list.  And finally, we are reminded of why books are 

important – and what the writer does to produce an enduring 

and impactful publication. 

As I meandered through the book, I recollected an early read 

that changed me – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith, 

first published in 1943.  I was about ten years old when I pulled 

this book from the massive wooden bookshelves of the Baker 

Street branch of the Bakersfield library, an old, grand building 

constructed of white marble blocks with broad steps leading to 

its entrance.  The rooms, a cool comfort, coming in out of the 

striking summer heat were furnished with oversized wooden 

tables and substantial wooden chairs, chairs that surrounded 

me, and left my feet dangling above the marble floor. It was 

silent there, save for the clip-clipping of the librarian’s heels as 

she crossed the room. 

While my experiences were quite different from Francie’s – her 

family newly immigrated, mine well-established in this country; 

she, living in the big city of Brooklyn, NY, and I living in a small 

farming town in Central California; her family poor, her father, 

an alcoholic, and my family comfortable and stable – like 

Francie, I was struggling to figure out who I was separate from 

my family.  For me, she was a kindred spirit, and Betty Smith’s 

book was like a bridge from the West Coast to the East, 

connecting me with Francie and in turn, with myself. 

Before I found A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I had resisted reading.  

It seemed that my parents (and even my younger brother, for 

that matter) were so much smarter than I.  They were fast 

readers with big vocabularies.  I read slowly and struggled to 

focus. My parents perused the papers each morning and 

discussed in depth the stories of the day, stories that did not 

interest me. I felt dumb and defeated, and so turned my 

attention to relationships.  People are what interested me.  I was 

social rather than intellectual, I thought.  I did not want to 

compete. 

But that summer when I was ten, at my mother’s 

encouragement, I joined a summer reading program at the 

Library and Francie Nolan showed me the importance of books.  

I saw how reading in some ways saved her from her strained 

home life and helped her find herself.  I began to see books 

differently, and as I read more the image I had of myself shifted. 

"And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all 

the Nolans. She had the violent weaknesses and passion for 

beauty of the shanty Nolans. She was a mosaic of her 

grandmother Rommely's mysticism, her tale-telling, her great 

belief in everything and her compassion for the weak ones. She 

had a lot of her grandfather Rommely's cruel will. She had some 

of her Aunt Evy's talent for mimicking, some of Ruthie Nolan's 

possessiveness. She had Aunt Sissy's love for life and her love 

for children. She had Johnny's sentimentality without his good 

looks. She had all of Katie's soft ways and only half of the 

invisible steel of Katie. She was made up of all these good and 

these bad things.  

She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the 

library. ....” 

-- Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn