Worth My Salt

It just thundered, how perfect. I love rain.
----no segue-----
In the back of my cumulative version of the Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis has an essay entitled "On Three Ways of Writing for Children."
The first time I read it (as I have owned the book for years I would not allow myself the pleasure of reading the essay till I re-read the chronicles in this form) I felt as if I was given the high honor of sitting down with my authorial hero and chatting about children's books.

It has become my national treasure.

So I am re-typing the essay for two reasons-one, because my desire is to mimic his recipe and what better way to do that then to pick apart his ingredients, and two, because this way I can mark all over the page.

I'm catching all sorts of things I didn't the first time. One such example I just typed out was something he said that makes me very proud of my history as a reader.
He says,
"Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a time-table" (773).

If I were in an actual conversation with him I would quickly slip in that by the time I was 16 I had read almost every John Grisham novel out there and now that I am 25 have books such as "Ramona Forever" (from the Ramona Quimby series) on my reading list.
I would probably follow that fact with a smug smile and a coy sip of my tea and wait for him to praise me but instead be met with his return to the conversation on writing fantasy for children.

"Silly Clive," I would say, "do go on."