My Book Is On TV!!

This post was written in response to a writing prompt for  RemembeRED from The Red Dress Club. This week's prompt is as follows: 
TV is something that people either watch a lot of or have definite feelings about. This week, we want you to think about tv show from your past. Maybe you watched it, maybe you didn't and it was just something that everyone else talked about.

What feelings does the show evoke? What memories does it trigger?


Stories. They are my passion. Whether I hear them, read them, watch them or create them - at all levels I have always loved them. This is the story of when I first began to understand that a story can be more than just words in a book.


It was 1986. I was ten years old.


I loved the Mets, the outdoors, playing softball, my family (especially my six-year old brother), and I loved books.


My school was involved in the Troll Book Club. When we got a catalog I'd come home with my favorite selections circled to show my parents and begin the ritual of begging for books. This is how I got The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. When I read the book I was captivated - it was fun, hilarious and I loved Ralph. The book was such an adventure. I told my brother about it explaining how this little mouse would ride around on a little motorcycle and I would see his eyes light up. "I can't wait until you can read this!" I would tell him. At school we'd talk about it too. We all loved Ralph.

Of course, in the bumbling brightness of childhood all things fizzle and new things captivate. Ralph was remembered, but no longer center stage. Then, a little more than a week after the Mets World Series win, my brother and I shuffled down to the basement to watch the ABC Weekend Special. That week's special was called "The Mouse and the Motorcycle"!
 

I had never seen a book becoming a movie. On the screen I saw my visions, my imagination, the pictures, the movements - all there to share with everyone. My brother could now share in this fantastic story with me. He understood what I loved about it, he could SEE how Ralph could ride a motorcycle - not a BIG one like people ride, but a mouse-sized motorcycle.

I yelled up the stairs to my parents. I told them they had to come down and see it as I held the book in my hand. I flipped through the pages as the movie went on - I couldn't believe it was happening - the words had become pictures. 

My parents were amused by my excitement and told me about all of the other movies I had already seen that were books first: ALL OF THE DISNEY MOVIES, The Wizard of Oz,  and even TV shows like The Little House on the Prarie!


How did I miss this? Every time I had seen a book with a movie title, I thought the book was made after the movie - I had it backwards! This was wonderful! As I sat with my book on my knee, imagining all of the universes I had visited through my pages coming to life on the screen, my brother sat on the floor with a toy motorcycle zipping it through the legs of the chairs, the table and throughout the house.

"It's just like you said, Nicole!" He was right, because it was just like I had imagined.

My book came to life. Someone read the book, imagined Ralph and then MADE HIM - not like Beverly Cleary did, which was the first act of creation, but made a physical, photograph-able, talking, moving form of him - just like when I drew him, but 1,000 times better! And, according to my parents, this was happening all the time.


One thing was for certain: I would never read a book the same way again.