My Crazy Amigo Time To Craft Creative, Therapeutic Sunday Postcard Art

This week Creative Therapy asked " What novel most impacted your life and why?" Well, as an English teacher and true lover of books, it's difficult to narrow my choice to one book. However, in the spirit of the season, I chose The Wizard of Oz, the very first fantasy novel I ever read. Explanation to follow... (Later)I'm back, after a little interruption I like to call "work."

One afternoon when I was about eight, as I was pillaging the closets andcupboards at my grandparents' house, I discovered a box of my mother's childhood books. Inside were treasures like Maida's Little House, Cherry Ames: Student Nurse, and several editions from the Wizard of Oz series. I devoured the first Wizard book in short order and went on to read about the adventures of Ozma, The Patchwork Girl, Tik-Tok, and Billina, the talking hen. The discovery of these books was like finding my own portal into another world, a world of magic, where trees had souls, children could be kings and queens, and good always triumphed over evil. The fantastic kingdoms of Oz created in me a longing for escape into adventure and enchantment, so I went on to visit Wonderland and Narnia, Green Knowe and Neverland, and later even Camazotz and Shangri La. By reading a fantasy, I could leave the stresses and fears of my own life behind, and travel to the perfect worlds of mermaids and gnome kings and wizards.

As an adult I carried the power of my dreams with me. I discovered that I could weave my own spells to create my world to realize my fantasy. I was able to imagine a family and build the world I wanted my children to have. I taught my children and students about the power of imagination. I taught them to celebrate the specialness of every day and that, with determination and dreams, they could invent their own realities. Because of what fantasy taught me as a child, I taught all my children that their inner visions could become real, that they could be their own heroes, that they could actually open the doors to inhabit the world that they once only imagined.

"Books are a uniquely portable magic." Stephen King