Bedtime stories

I don’t want to talk just about one story, because I grew up with MANY stories. I was lucky enough to have a mom who loved stories, books, and reading. I think it’s because of her that I love it so much too.

I think I got my first book when I was three or four years old. I learned to read The Ugly Duckling at four and it was one of the first stories I grew up loving. My parents had given me a book with four stories, and The Ugly Duckling was one of them.

I loved the story because I so identified with it. I always felt like an ugly duckling myself, and this little fellow was discriminated against because he was different from his siblings, not realizing he came from a different species. He wasn’t accepted and he felt lonely and misunderstood. However, he overcame all the difficulties and learned to accept himself and grew up to be a beautiful swan. Who doesn’t like that story?

I have most of those books that my mom read to me as a kid. Some I bought later in life as I wanted to keep them and re-read them.

Being the daughter of a Swede, I grew up hearing stories by the wonderful Astrid Lindgren, and Selma Lagerlöf’s wonderful story of Nils Holgersson and his travels around Sweden, which teaches kids about Swedish geography while learning about the adventures of a boy who’s turned into a gnome by a wise gnome because he’s mean to the farm animals and he never listens to his parents. As a little gnome, Nils travels around Sweden with a flock of geese. It’s such a wonderful story. My mom would read this to us when we were kids.

I was also lucky because my mom didn’t just read to us, she also made us books. She did one for me that I still keep in pretty good condition with songs and short stories that she would read to me to sleep. I love that book! I treasure it with all my heart.

As I said, my mom would read a lot of Swedish tales, books, and stories. I have a book also from my childhood full of short stories from Swedish authors or translated to Swedish. There’s one about Babar goes on an excursion. I always loved Babar.

A Scandinavian book I just got from my mom which I also used to read as a child was the Moomintroll, which is hugely popular in Sweden. I can’t remember if she used to read that to us when we went to bed, but it’s one I’ve grown up with and I adore!

What other stories did I grow up with? Of course, I can’t forget to mention The Brothers Lionheart, also by the amazing Astrid Lindgren. Probably one of my favorite books of hers of all times, it tells the story of two brothers, one of whom dies, leaving the other to mourn his death and absence. It’s so beautifully written, and so emotional. It’s a great book for children because it helps them deal with death and understand it in such a compassionate and honest way. I bought it as an adult because I wanted to read it again and find out if it had the same effect it had had when I was a child. It indeed did and even more so. The beauty of Astrid Lindgren’s writing lies in her ability to speak to both children and grown ups alike. Though she was a children’s book author, when one reads her stories, one can’t help but identify with each and every word, hanging on to them as if afraid of losing them with time.

When I was a kid a movie called The Neverending Story came out in theaters. My mom took one of my sisters to see it with her, as they were on a different island for some reason I cannot recall now. I didn’t see the movie until years later. However, I got the book and read that instead. Ende, a German author, wrote it in the 70s. It was published in ’79. I read it in Spanish and fell in love with it!

So when I heard about Momo, he wasn’t some unknown writer to me anymore. My parents also gifted me Momo at some point in my life, and I can’t say how much I just loved the story! It rings true even today. I guess it’s sort of a dystopian story for children. Such a great book!

All these books were either read to me or I read them myself before going to bed. I’ve always loved reading before going to sleep. It helps me drift deeper into my own subconscious and navigate my mind in ways I cannot do when I’m awake. Perhaps because of my habit of reading before bed I have always been able to recall my dreams. Who knows!

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