Once Upon A Time...Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

It's interesting to me that there is a word for make-believe, which of course is Fiction, but when referring to reality, it's just boring old Non-Fiction, which I take to mean "anything that's not made up." Why is real life given such a nasty name in literature? So negative sounding and uninteresting. At least, that's how it's always felt to me. No library I've ever been in has yet compelled me to "come hither to the Non-Fiction section! You'll find amazing hidden treasures of knowledge and wonder!" Well, that's not exactly true. I did submerge myself in the "crochet and embroidery" section of our lovely library for a few weeks of extreme boredom one fall in recent memory. But besides that, ever since I was a wee little thing, it's the made-up stories that have intrigued me most.

When I was three years old, I memorized the story of the Three Little Pigs, as told by Paul Galdone, because I requested it to be read to me so often. This lovely book with it's delightful illustrations kept me spellbound for many before-nap readings, according to my mother. In fact, I think I read it to her while she perhaps snatched a few moments of shut-eye herself! This book and so many others still delight me because they fill me with nostalgia. My mom read to us every day. I remember sitting beside her with my older brother on her other side and my little brother on her lap, my legs in my shorts sticking ever-so-slightly and sweatily to the worn and cracked leather of our brown couch, waiting for my mom to turn the page to the next part of the story, and hearing her voice trail off a bit before she reached it. The solution was simple: either I or my brother would reach up and pinch her nose gently, and her eyes would pop back open! It was during this time of waiting for her to continue on that I realized I was starting to recognize the words on the page, that I knew what they were saying! And then, of course, there was no going back. I was hooked on books! Do you remember the first book you learned to read, or when your love of books began?

I've loved reading picture books and chapter books out loud to my boys over the years. When they were little, it was one of the only times they wanted to sit still and cuddle, so I would read for upwards of a half hour before nap time and again before bedtime, enjoying that cuddle time and their stillness and the way they focused in on the pictures and the words. I could almost pinpoint the moment it clicked for them too—the words on the page meant something.

Of course, we enjoyed non-fiction reading as well. The twins were fascinated by dinosaurs, and we worked over the dinosaur section at our small-town library for about 6 months before they finally tired of it. By the end of that time, they had memorized over 30 dinosaurs' scientific names and I was ready to pull my hair out if I had to read one more book about "sauruses."

So what is it about stories that appeals to so many of us? Can you learn life lessons from fiction? Can you be inspired by fiction? Can your life change from reading about fictional characters' lives?

Victor Hugo said, “History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.”

I love this quote because even if fiction is a pack of lies made up by the author, it should lead us, in the end, to the deeper truth that is in our humanity; the truth that we can recognize within ourselves, and which will help us to come to know ourselves better.

Orson Scott Card said, “Real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors—we hope—of your life come from reading fiction.” I like this idea of what fiction can do for us as well. We can play with all sorts of alarming ideas and fantasies in fiction, and then we can close the book and escape back into real life. Or, vice versa, we can escape from real life into fictional characters' lives and come back when we feel strengthened to face our own frailties and fears. Either way, it's a win-win.

Thank you, fiction, for being such a friend to so many!

Rachael