Ramona Koval - By the Book: A Readers Guide to Life

R eading a book, my mother would stretch out in our lounge room on one of the deep purple divans that would be made up later into beds, her soft body covered in a blanket, her attention absorbed by the pages in her hands. She was lost to us.

Im sure she must have read aloud to me, a soft Polish lilt to her voice, but I cant remember Mama doing this. Reading was her self-education program, and English was the latest in a line of language lessons that had started with Yiddish in the Polish shtetl where she had been born, then Polish when she was big enough to go to school at seven, then German when she was living under a false identity as a teenager in Warsaw during the war (carefully hiding the Yiddish construction and accent, which had their roots in Middle German), then French when she lived in Paris for four years after the war. Now we were in Melbourne, and the pages she read on the couch with such concentration were usually in English.

Her name was Sara. Before I was born she worked as a finisher in a garment factory in Flinders Lane, in the heart of the citys rag-trade, sewing on buttons by hand and embroidering collars. She had deep blue eyes and wavy brown hair, which she said had been blonde like mine but turned dark after having me. She was on the short side, with a full bosom, as they said then, and rounded hips. She wore a starched apron in our small one-bedroom, ground-floor flat, but would always take it off to go outside. She had little to spend on herself, but she favoured a particular brand of French perfume, Amour Amour by Jean Patou. I suspect she didnt buy it for herself. And that my father certainly wouldnt have thought of giving it to her.

I cant remember a proper bookshelf in our flat, so perhaps in those early years my mother borrowed her books from friends, although I dont think of any of them as readers. I dont remember going to a library till much later.

By the time I was three, in 1957, I owned some Little Golden Books. Now the only one I recognise is The Little Red Hen, the story of an industrious hen that tries to enlist the other farmyard animals to help with planting, harvesting, and otherwise preparing the grain for flour to be made into bread. They are too busy having fun, and when her hard work is rewarded she doesnt share her bounty with them.

I have always thought the little red hen was a twisted martyr who should have made the tasks fun so the other animals might have wanted to help her. The Little Golden Books were targeted at exactly the child I was. Published in war-time America, in 1942, they were twenty-five cents each and were designed to appeal to children from all socioeconomic levels. They were sold broadly, in department stores as well as bookshops and specialist childrens outlets. In 1950s working-class Melbourne, we bought our books from the newsagent.

Enid Blytons Noddy Goes to Toyland was another favourite. I remember the warm tangerine cover and the happily skewed multicoloured letters of the title. I couldnt read yet. I liked Noddy and Big Ears because they had a red open-topped car. They used it to breeze about the countryside and get away from evil golliwogs. Thats what reading was for my mother, and became for mea way to escape, a private time machine, a place that began with moral instruction but soon morphed into empathy and imagination.

When I went to kindergarten at four, I discovered that there was more than one Noddy bookthe bookshelf there had lots of them: Here Comes Noddy Again, BeBrave Little Noddy!, Do Look Out Noddy! and Noddy Gets into Trouble. I learned that books could be collected, that they were important enough to keep and that a story that seemed to be over could be part of a bigger one.

I tackled the John and Betty books. They were full of mysterious symbols to be mastered but, when you did, their messages were so much less interesting than Toytown and Mr Plod.

John can jump. Betty can jump too. Fluff the cat and Scottie the dog likewise.

I had chickenpox that year and was away from kindergarten for some weeks. When I came back it was my turn to read aloud. I loved my teacher, Miss Joseph, who was large and warm and towered over the little children. I wanted to make her happy. There was a new letter at the front of a group of sentences. It looked like the letter l for lamp and lady and lolly. So I spoke up loudly. L can see Scottie. L can see Fluff. There was a murmuring as I charged ahead. L can see John. L can see Betty.