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Magic journey starts with the written wordESCANABA — Beth Ann is working her way through the alphabet, and is right at the point of starting to put letters together to form words and words together to form sentences.Naturally this gets grampa all excited, for he has been doing that •Very thing for more than a half a Century and thinks it is very importantWell, it is very important so there. From here on out much of what Beth Ann learns, much of her Hfe, much of her attitudes and opinions, all of that and more will come from the reading skills she is now developing.I went to the video store the other day and asked for an old classic, “Mutiny on the Bounty,” and got a blank stare and no video. Tried another store, they checked their computer, and by grannies they had it The original, 1935 version, With Clark Gable and Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone and a Cast of thousands.‘ Great movie, but it was based on a great book, as most great movies are. The movies can help visualize some of the scenes and action, but they cannot take the place of words, description and imagination. Television can and can’t do the same thing.“Mutiny on the Bounty” was number one in a trilogy written by Charles Notdhoff and James Norman Hall. They fought in the Lafayette Rscadrille during World War I and when peace came they fled to the Pacific to retreat the world of horror they had experienced.“Mutiny on the Bounty” told the story of how a group of sailors rebelled against the iron rule of CapL William Bligh on the trip of the Bounty to Tahiti, where they were to pick up breadfruit to transport to the West Indies, where it would provide cheap food for the slaves on the sugar plantations.They took the ship, put Bligh and some loyal crew members in a small boat, and set them adrift, supposedly to die. Bligh fooled them and sailed 3,000 miles to Timor, in the East Indies, and then back to Britain. That started the search for the mutineers.The second book of the trilogy. “Men Against the Sea,” tells of Bligh's journey. The third. “Pitcairn’s Island,” tells of the refuge found by the mutineers and the tragedies that followed.Can you imagine a 9-year-old finding these books in the Peter White Library in Marquette and * devouring them and absorbing theDave RoodFor the Dailywords and images? That’s what happened to grampa, and he got to thinking about those books and about Beth Ann learning to read all of what she would find in the future.Nordhoff and Hall followed gram-pa’s encounter with such classics as “Black Beauty,” ‘Treasure Island,” “Little Women” and others, and all of them were far more than interesting stories well-told.For instance, what did I learn by reading “Mutiny on the Bounty?’ It taught me some of the history of the last part of the 18th Century; it taught me geography, for I had to look up Tahiti and the West Indies and Portsmouth, in England, from where the Bounty sailed. I had to find out what Escadrille meant and why Lafayette. It taught me about courage and cruelty as Bligh drove his crew; it told me of native life on Tahiti and why the sailors thought it was paradise; I read about politics and breadfruit and slavery and transportation of that age; how characters were developed and personalities and triumph over odds.That single book taught me a good many things, and other books have taught me more. Books open up those magic doors aid provide those magic moments and transport you to faraway places with strange-sounding names. They did it more than 50 years ago and they still do it today.And Beth Ann is right at the beginning of that wonderful journey. How lucky she is!EDITOR'S NOTE: David Rood’s column, “Along the Sidelines,” appears each Saturday in the Daily Press. Copies of his newest book, “Onward and Upward in Upper Inwood, ” are available at area bookstores, or may be ordered by mail by sending $10 to Rood at 1310 1st. Ave. S., Escanaba, 49829, or Rte. 2, Box 2463, Manistique, 49854.-Almanac-By The Associated PressToday is Saturday, April 15, the 105th day of 1995. There are 260Press
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Escanaba Daily Press
Escanaba, Michigan, US
Sat, Apr 15, 1995
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