Bookathon - Z

 Zack Zombie. Plants vs Zombies. Mark Zuckerberg.

Z is a hard letter, and I'm tempted to read books about zombies (or zombosses), or fake books that are not really books, like Facebook, or The Book Thief by Mark Zusack, but that would be cheating as I saw the movie and haven't read that book. I did come across a copy in the book fridge library that was stamped Waitakere College, but it had been withdrawn so it actually ended up at Paremoremo Prison. I took a lot of withdrawn books there as I was weeding the collection, a lot of them for children, as children of prisoners needed something to read to stop them going crazy (and their dads too). 

My sister once gave me a copy of the Librarian of Auschwitz as a gift which was a real life story of a librarian who smuggled books into the concentration camps. She figured I might enjoy it but I'm like I already work in schools that can be like concentration camps and I don't really need to be reminded. 

This is because many schools tend to  have some kind of Gestapo/Nazi regime thing going on that represses any freedom of speech so you can't really say what you truly think. And woe betide you if you are in the minority and don't fit in with everyone else. I am not sure why this is, but 30 children in a classroom of mandatory attendance can sometimes feel like a bootcamp. When children didn't come to school the Principals would worry and call the parents but I always got the children who came to school but hated going to class so they would come to the library instead. If school was more fun and engaging maybe they'd want to come instead of playing truant. And if there were no bullies. But getting rid of school bullies was always a problem especially when teachers sometimes exhibited bullying behaviour themselves. That was when school became this scary place you'd want to stay away from. Work doesn't make you free after all. 

I tried carving out a safe space for readers in the library. It was here that we could tell our own stories. If nobody could find a Z book I would tell them find a NZ story. These were often lost in a sea of American, Australian and British books that spoke of slavery, convicts and Empire.  The series I spent most of my time reading that was often overlooked was the My New Zealand Story series of books. Written from the perspective of a tween about a period of NZ history in diary format, one could experience what it was like to win the vote for women, be a gumdigger, live in Auckland's Chinatown, take a stand at Bastion Point, watch the Auckland Harbour Bridge being built, win the America's Cup, take a ferry ride on the Wahine, undergo a Dawn Raid, rescue someone at Tangiwai, hear about relatives dying at Mt Erebus, or live like a hippie in an Ohu. You could be there when the French blew up the Rainbow Warrior, or check for aftershocks at the Canterbury Earthquakes, survive the pandemic (both small pox and Spanish Flu) or be a Mission girl in the Hellhole of the Pacific, or a camp cook in Kauri logging operation or what happened when the nation divided over the 1981 Springbok Rugby tour and not know what side you were supposed to be on.

I've lived vicariously through all those stories so now I know what it's like. I've been with Anne Frank in The Secret Annexe and read about her hopes and dreams for her future from her diary and every story I ever read I feel like I've become a wiser and more understanding person to have read it. Z is when you reach the end of the alphabet and realise now it's time to rearrange the letters into stories of your own. 

Four more days of Great Kiwi Bookathon. Please stay on for more books about what it's like to experience blind and low vision and to value the precious freedom to be able to read.