I have a distinct memory of rushing to a corner of a school library to see if the next book in a certain series had been returned, and then I would finally get to read it. They were “old” to my child-mind in the mid-1980s; hardbacks with black line illustrations. For the longest time, I only remembered that it took place in the Amazon. Somewhere along the way, the plot of boys/men traveling the world slipped into my recall.
The excited energy of the memory feels like a 7-10 years old’s, but it’s wrapped inside the schematic memory of my middle school library: the corner to the left of the door. It is not a dishonest memory, nor even an incomplete one—I have a concrete recollection of my love for a story. (This perspective of one memory wrapped inside a different home/location came from reading poet Shane McCrea’s memoir Pulling the Chariot of the Sun.)
But, it sure does seem like such a distinct memory would contain a few concrete details: title, a character name, a scene. (According to Pixar’s Inside Out, those details were sucked from my long term memory and sent to the dump via pneumatic tubes.) As I learn more about neurobiology (top of my fascination list), I better understand that our human desire (or just my demand) for strict, provable accuracy just doesn’t line up with the science of how our brains actually work.
Between the Webcrawler search engine (1996) and google becoming a verb (2006), I occasionally looked online, but the proliferation of Amazon the company made “kids book about Amazon” useless. Still, I clearly had not let it go because a month ago I went hunting again.
There’s a fun Instagram page that I’ve followed for a while called @myoldbooks (run by Peaseporridgepress, a vintage children’s bookshop). They frequently share “what’s that book called” requests from readers for followers to work their librarian/bookseller/bibliophile magic and come up with a title. I love reading other people’s memories—cherished snippets that seem as incomplete as they are important.
I truly thought I had so few details about my Amazon kid series that I could not possibly submit. Then on a random Monday mid-morning, I impulsively typed up what I could remember and sent the request.
It was posted yesterday.
The first comment was within minutes: “Willard Price’s Adventure series is about two brothers who go around the world getting animals for their dad.” A quick google of “Willard Price” brought up the first book in the series: Amazon Adventure, but with the bright colors and graphics of the 21st century on the cover. An image search revealed the original 1949 cover: army green with illustration of two boys wrestling an anteater.
Memory unlocked.
Putting a smile on my face and a lightness to my day is no small thing. A human person spent their time typing in my request and loading it to Instagram. Then real live people spent a snippet of their day to help out. All so that I (and others) might be able to nod and smile, “oh, that’s the book!” I find great joy in these kismet connections that happen when humans sincerely engage with what they love.
🦉What affection for a childhood book do you remember? (With or without exact details.)
Rabbit Holes
🐰 Introducing, the Questioning Owl 🦉to go with my rabbits. (Yes, I realize I’ve now put the rabbits in peril.)
🐰 I have a vague sense that I may have liked these books because they weren’t “for girls.” I never read The Babysitters Club; maybe this was my replacement? I also fully expect that it has problematic characterizations of indigenous people. Based on a few bizarre tidbits in Willard Price's wikipedia entry, I know I’ll have to get the book. (There are discussions about whether he was a spy, as he claimed in his autobiography.)
🐰 Pulling the Chariot of the Sun by Shane McCrae. McCrae was kidnapped at the age of 3 by his white grandparents from his Black father, except he didn't know he'd been kidnapped until his teens. Because of the abuse by his grandfather, he has very few memories (implied due to disassociation). His lyrical prose grapples with memory and its flaws. Several times he simply tells the reader that he knows, as an adult, that there is no way this person or that location could have intersected—yet that is the shape of his memory. By not correcting the memory (or re-writing without telling the reader), the memoir feels like an act of appreciation to his child brain that sought to protect him. Disconcerting “Fun” Fact: McCrae was kidnapped and taken to the same city in Texas where my family and I lived for twelve years.
🐰 The Pixar film Inside Out provides anthropomorphic representations of emotions (in the characters of joy, sadness, disgust, fear, anger) but also a physical representation of memory. Also see: The science of ‘Inside Out’: 5 TED-Ed Lessons to help you understand the film” by Alex Rosenthal. & Forbes’ How ‘Inside Out’ Explains the Science of Memory (2015).
Preview photo of owl credit: Jim Machajewski, 2009.