by Holly Huffstutler

Created on: April 20, 2009

"When you read a book as a child it becomes a part of you in a way that no other reading in your life ever will." That's a character defining line from "You've Got Mail's Kathleen Kelly, who owns a children's book store and firmly believes in reading to discover your identity. I'm not sure I buy that thesis that books we read as an adult can't help us learn about who we are just as much as the one's we absorb. But what I do know is that my bookshelf is at the moment holding together a copy of "Francis Hodgson Burnett's "A Little Princess." My copy of this book is so well loved that its has become "real." For those of you who don't get that reference from another great children's book; "The Velveteen Rabbit" became "real" after many years of love from its owner, where the other newer toys did not.

I had already read and fallen in love with "A Little Princess" when I got it my very own copy for Christmas when I was ten. I have long since lost the exquisitely illustrated book jacket (which featured a beautifully dressed little girl entering a building while an awed servant girl's faced gawked through the cellar window.

"A Little Princess" did help to form my identity. It allowed me to escape into the decadence (before I knew what that meant) of Victorian England while helping to teach me about the class system that enables the decadence of the aristocracy and a certain "select seminary for young girls." I learned that England controlled India at the time. I learned some French. I learned that classrooms are the same no matter what time or country you're in, but that upper class British people sound different than lower class British people. And I learned that adults can be jealous of children.

But most of all I learned that I wanted to be Sara Crewe. I couldn't have been handed a better role model than the solemn, intelligent, bilingual, kind Ms. Crewe who spent the first few years of her life rich and loved only to use her strength, sense of self, and active imagination to survive when everything is taken away.

What I see now when I reread the book is that Sara has stayed as complex as I thought she was as a child. Burnett gave her intelligence and strength and put her in a riches to rags scenario but didn't make her a silent long suffering victim. She makes the best of her new life but longs for the comfort and love of her old one, she exhibits natural anger in response to her impoverished situation, striking out at friends who aren't to blame for her situation.

My copy of "A Little Princess" is sad, the front and back covers are held together by tape. But I'm not about to let it go. Because the pages are still bound together and because I never know when I want to slip back into Sara's world, looking at it with new eyes and remembering all that I have felt about it before.

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