Humans Are Like Fruitcake

Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

Humans are much like fruitcake. Now, I know fruitcake analogies are hard to swallow for most American readers but, as a born and bred Brit, I love (a well-made) fruitcake - so go with me on this for a moment!

When we're young the things we learn, and especially the 'truths' we discover for ourselves mix the essential ingredients of our character, forming the person we'll become - they become baked into our adult selves. As adults, we keep on learning and discovering but very rarely do new ideas impact us as powerfully once we get into our middle years - they form the icing on the cake, not the cake itself (and yes, before you ask, in England we do ice our fruitcakes - particularly for weddings and Christmas).

I was struck by this recently while rereading one of my favorite childhood books and remembering how I felt the first time I read it. Manxmouse by Paul Gallico is a gentle fable about a blue tailless china mouse who magically comes to life. Born without fear because 'no one is born frightened or fearing anything', Manxmouse travels through the English countryside befriending the large and small, both animal and human, and living through any number of narrow escapes, but wherever he goes he is told that he 'belongs to Manx Cat' and slowly fear grows in him. Determined to take control of his destiny he travels to the Isle of Man (home of the manx cats) to face his fate.

Reading Manxmouse to our daughter over the last couple of weeks has been an immensely enjoyable experience, but the pleasure for me has come more from recollection and seeing her enjoyment than in the reading itself. Reading the story as an adult simply doesn't have the the impact that that first reading did oh so long ago, and wouldn't have done even if I'd never read it before. In fact, I can confidently say that few books that I've read in the past couple of decades have left the mark on me that those early childhood favorites did - and the reason for this is simply that the profound insights first discovered in the pages of books such as Manxmouse, that stirred my thinking in new ways, are old news to me now.

Much is written about the importance of children reading but, to me, the most fundamental reason to read good books young is usually overlooked.Yes, being able to read well is a great advantage to getting good grades, a good job and all that - but more profoundly, good books enable children to discover for themselves who they are and what matters to them - they provide essential ingredients that, when baked in the slow-oven of childhood, shape the adults we become.

No doubt some will say that such lessons can be found in many places, not just in the pages of a good book, and I'm sure they're right.  But I can't help thinking that there is something about the experience of reading and discovering ideas for the first time in the quiet of ones own mind through the pages of a book that allows the penetration of thoughts deeper and more profoundly than a TV sitcom or any number of late-night sleepovers. Others might disagree. I can only speak for myself, that much of what I am, think and feel came from the pages of a handful of books that I discovered before the age of 13, a disproportionate number of which were written by Paul Gallico.