For the ♥ of Books

When I was in Elementary School I read a lot. One year, I think it may have been the 4th Grade, we had an assignment where we had to write a letter to our favorite author. There was no doubt in my mind who I was going to send my letter too.
Zoa Sherburne. She wrote my favorite book...Why Have the Birds Stopped Singing? I loved this book. LOVED. I always remembered the basic plot of the book, and certain sections, but one thing I had not remembered was the name of the main character. Until my daughter brought the book home from her High School. She knew I had been looking for the book every time we went to an antique store or a book store that carried used books. I could never find it, but she found it in her High School library. Why it made it to that level I have no idea. I had read the book in Elementary School. So she brought it home to me. I was so excited. And then I saw the name of the main character...Katie...my daughters name. I guess the book meant more to me than I even knew! I had to have it. I had looked for years for this book. So I did something that I had never done before, and I have never done since. I kept it. I did not let Katie return the book to school. I have always felt guilty about keeping the book. But I just had to have it. At the end of the year the school office sent a letter saying that Katie still had a book checked out and needed to either return the book or pay the fine. I paid the fine. Hey....they gave me the option. The book is now one of my treasured possessions. Along with the letter I received from Zoa Sherburne. I was one of the few kids in school that year who actually received a letter back from the author they had written too. I still have the letter. But it is up in the attic in a box of stuff from my "formative years" ie:before marriage & kids!
The plot of the book was this...
"During an epileptic seizure while visiting her ancestral home, sixteen-year-old Katie is transported back in time and mistaken for her great-great-great grandmother who also had epilepsy at a time when the disease was greatly misunderstood."
I remembered how "Katie" awoke from her seizure to find herself locked in a strange room. And that is where she was kept by her father because he thought something was wrong with her because of the epilepsy. And then how she was rescued by the handsome.....
OK....I won't tell you the story since it really was written for pre-teens. I just loved it so much.
In doing a little research for this blog, I came across an article in a Seattle newspaper from October of 1995. Zoa had passed away a few days earlier at the age of 83. I was sad to see that. She has been gone for so long. I would have loved to have written her again. Telling her how much her book had meant to me. About how I still have the letter she wrote me. And that meant even more. About how I....uhhhhh....refused no matter how much my daughter pleaded, to return the book to the school library. Wow....feeling a little guilty again.....