I don’t remember stuff from my childhood as much as I would like too. But I do know that reading was an important thing in my life. I attend in an awful “pink-Floyd-like” school, and whan I was little I thought that I was a slow reader. In parallel to my schooling experience, I was a good reader. Never a good student. I read to avoid the awful shadows of dictatorship, I read to avoid my parents crumbling marriage and my Darwinian school system. My dad used to be a journalist and he travelled a lot. He always brought a book for me after his travels. He use to invite me to Valparaiso, we went in a train. He and I, both bought a book or a magazine, and read all the way to the beach. We went to have ice-cream and, guess what?, we each read our book. The bonus point was that my little sister was left behind (Awful, but at age 7 it was lovely). My grandmother had 28 grandchildren. I was number 20 but very close to her. She always thought of me as the scholarly one….even if I was a very poor student. She told me stories, read books and took me to book buying trips. So reading meant two things for me: a safe place to escape the world and also affection. I soon learn to day dream about the characters, my very own fanfiction world  to scape shit.
I used to get a monthly allowance of $1000. Every month I went to buy a book form “Billiken” collection. It was a small, hard cover, red classics tittles for young people. The bus to the bookstore cost $100. Each book cost $800. So, I spent all my pocket money in just one trip to the bookstore. I love their hard cover, their pictures and the fact they had footnotes from the editor and the translator. It makes me feel so grown up!
Little women saga and most of Alcott’s novellas were my favourites. I re-read them several times. I think they also had a complex world, a war, and have family difficulties –their dad away from them. The promise of the world regaining their balance and the hope of a “happily ever after” was very comforting to me. My being a teacher is modelled after Jo March. My ideas of alternatives education were sow by Jo March’s Plumfield School. My wanting to be “knowledgably” was partly Alcott’s fault.