Elephant and Piggie shaped my childhood.
Along with Clifford the Big Red Dog, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Berenstain Bears, and even Fancy Nancy; each one carried me through phases of my childhood-–no matter how long.
Every Monday evening, I would saunter out of the Saratoga Library armed with countless books to serve as my entertainment throughout the week. I sat in the waiting room for doctors and hearing audiologists with my pick of the Captain Underpants series. Physically, I sat in the car on my way to soccer, but mentally I was on an endless adventure with Geronimo Stilton. In the morning, as I chowed down cereal ten minutes behind schedule, I found the time to grab Calvin and Hobbes to keep me company as I ate. My parents—done with the silence of my sisters and I as we ate dinner, too immersed in our novels to pay attention to casual conversation-–banned books from the dinner table. Instead we held them on our laps, zoning out of conversations for a short while until discovered and the book pried from our hands.
My childhood was built around books, and each time I come across those that once kept me company through every adventure, I can’t help but miss the simplicity contained within them. I appreciate all my reading as a child did for me, allowing me to now comprehend and analyze the hidden meanings behind classics like Of Mice and Men and Frankenstein. But sometimes, I just want to go back to when Toad sat on a rock. And Frog sat with him.