“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. ” – The Tale Of Despereaux Reading is my life. It’s my escape from the world around me. I love getting lost in a story about monsters and myths, or a Cinderella gone wrong. If I didn’t draw as much as I did, I’d probably be the anti-social bookworm in the back, like in all those cliche teenage love stories. It’s actually quite surprising to see how many people dislike books, there’s nothing wrong with a little reading every once and awhile. But who am I to judge?
I wasn’t a very big reader myself until maybe two years ago. Of course, that leads to the first reason why I enjoy reading so much. My favorite book, at the moment, but one I don’t think I’ll ever forget. The Tale Of Despereaux is by far, the best book I’ve read. It’s about a little mouse named Despereaux, who is the black sheep of the family, he likes to read the books in the king’s library, not eat them, like his brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, one day, he falls in love with the princess, though, that’s forbidden.
Without a second thought, he tries to get the princess’s attention, and when he does, his sibling finds out. Hurriedly telling their father, he was sent to the mouse ‘court being banished to the dungeon with the rats. There’s also a second part to this story, one of the servants to the king, a little girl, who was traded for a red cloak by her father to an old man, only to be found and taken in by the royalty. Her greed consumed her, being led to dark intentions by a small rat when she brought food to the dungeon keeper. Telling her lies of gold and treasury, about living the life of a princess.
In the middle of the night, with a butchers’ knife, she sneaks into the princess’s bedroom, waking her from her soft slumber. She threatened her into the dungeon, locking her up, and taking lessons about how to be a proper princess. Then, back to Despereaux, he found the dungeon keeper, being saved by him from the blood thirsty rats. The dungeon keeper was a little messed up in the head, but lost no effort in convincing the small mouse into getting out of the dark, dirty, rat-filled dungeon, which he did, only to get his tail cut off by the king’s cook.
After realising the princess was no longer upstairs, from the king panicking about his beloved daughter gone missing, he ventures back into the dungeon, expect with a red thread tied around his waist, so he doesn’t get lost. Once finding her- surrounded by the hungry rats- he commenced a, might I say, epic battle. He defeated the rats with his needle mimicking a sword, finding a way to free the princess from the locks, and getting her out. It’s a truly beautiful book, and I love it so much.
It also gave me an addiction to mythical books, heh. Well now that my rambling is over, I think I’ll start my next reason as to why I’m such a large reader. It’s a person, instead of a book, two people, actually. My two best friends back in Frazee. Mattison and Rebecca. We’d have book races, picking a book out of the same kind, and race to finish it before the others. We all have a competitive side, whether it be sports or Mario Kart. Usually, Becca would win, but it always led me to new books.
That’s how I found The Tale Of Despereaux, coincidently. They really influenced my reading, and I’m glad we’re still friends, considering this year is our, per se, 7th anniversary. My third and final reason as to why reading is my specialty, is a manga. Manga is technically a comic book, but instead of a more realistic setting and art style, its mythical, but don’t be fooled, there’s plenty manga with a more.. down-to-earth feel. The first manga lever read, was Deadman Wonderland. I won’t go into detail, though.
It was a gift from my step-dad, and I’m so happy he got it for me, because he’s the first actual fatherly figure in my life, since my biological dad left when I was around 3 or 4. I’ve read many manga, and watched a lot of animes since then, so it’s opened my mind a bit. Like every time you read a new book, it leads you further into the library, except, I’m ecstatic to move onto the next. So yeah, I think that I became such a reader over the years because I try to keep to myself, or in a small group of friends. I do plan to read more in the future, hopefully I can even publish my own book!
As I get into highschool and college, reading will be important (considering | plan to get into the art school in the cities) and I think a little free reading won’t hurt me. Though, as get into adulthood, I don’t want to have kids- at least not until I’m much older, because I plan to travel around the world, so reading with them would be rough on the both of us, and like said in my quote, our world- our society, is just horrifying, and I don’t want to drag a life into this place. And as I bring this paper to a close, I’d like to thank you for reading my autobiography. Maybel inspired you to read more? Who knows.