My first book

We were away in a hockey tournament. I always got so excited about hockey tournaments because it meant that I got to spend time alone with my father. I was just a young one and I can’t remember too much about where we were. What I do remember is that our hotel was connected to this shopping complex. One evening we ran through the domed bridge that connected the hotel to the mall and went exploring. My dad wanted to buy me a gift, a souvenir from our trip. He took me into a book store. He let me browse through all the books and chose two. He picked out Bambi for me, a classic, little did I know. I was more enthralled by the pretty deer on the front cover. Whoever said you should not judge a book by its cover got things all wrong. That’s exactly what I did. That is how I found one of my greatest childhood favourites, The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye. It was this beautiful pink cover with a young girl in a pretty pink dress. I felt an immediate attachment to this book. With a giddy little jump my dad knew he had to buy them both. I must not have been much older than 6 or 7 and these were rather large novels for a child of that age. Nevertheless, my dad got them for me. They were my first real books, what would later open the floodgate to my passion and life that circulated around reading. I remember that I wasn’t old enough to really read books to that extent so I remember taking them home crawling up in bed, tossing Bambi aside, and excitedly opening up my new shiny pink book. The words seemed daunting on the page. I started to read a little bit, got really frustrated and put the book aside. When my dad came in to check on me to see how I was progressing, I happily announced that I had read one whole page! This was a complete lie. I had barely even finished the first sentence before I had given up in a huff. Well, biting my tongue every night I turned the page and placed the book mark in between the pages. Then I placed the book back on the shelf. In a way I felt accomplished. My dad thought he had a genius on his hands; he actually had a little mischievous liar. Each day the pages turned but no words were read.

A few months later I found the supposedly read book in one of my drawers. I picked it up, held it in my hands flipping the pages and slowly starting to read each fantastical word. In the middle of my spring cleaning I started to read The Ordinary Princess, a complete distraction from my chores. In matter of hours I was half way through the book. My parents wanted to go for a drive so I hoped into the back of the van and kept reading away. My eyes never left the page for even a second. I crawled up in the back seat while my parents did their shopping escaping to the fantastical world of Amy. 

Princess Amy of Phantasmorania receives a special fairy christening gift: Ordinariness. Unlike her six beautiful sisters, she has brown hair and freckles, and would rather have adventures than play the harp, embroider tapestries- or become a Queen. When her royal parents try to marry her off, Amy runs away, and because she's so ordinary, easily becomes the fourteenth assistant kitchen maid at a neighbouring palace. Like me, she realizes that her ordinariness is what makes her unique. Her strength in many ways comes from her ordinary demeanour. Knowing full well that she does not fit into the rest of her family, Amy takes off and claims her independence. Travelling alone setting all fears aside, she must come to learn how to rely on herself. In her travels she learns that there are people like her out there and that she does in fact “fit in” to a social circle where she is welcomed, accepted and loved.  As a child I never felt at home or in the right place. When I turned 16 I took the opportunity to move to Saskatchewan for the summer. There I started my own personal journey, searching for a place to call home. However, it was not until university that I was able to find my social network. As a child this book gave me the hope that after a journey through a mystical forest, I would find my home.