The love of reading started for me really early, probably by the second grade. Until recently, I hadn’t realized the effect all this reading had on my life. Possibly some of it was subliminal. On close evaluation it appears that all of my children have names from characters in some of my favorite books. This realization came to me with the recent death of J.D. Salinger.
I knew from the beginning that my daughter, Zoë was named from his book Franny
and Zooey.
Although not my favorite Salinger book, I liked the name Zooey from the first time I read the title. I preferred the spelling Zoë though, as I thought Zooey would be accidentally pronounced Zoo-ie (Like a zoo.) and I thought the simpler spelling with umlauts (two dots over the e) looked nicer.
My favorite Salinger book really is his most famous The
Catcher in the Rye.
Zoë was very close to being named Phoebe until my mother objected. I had not heard of this book until I was about 13, visiting my grandparents in Washington State. While riding on a ferry on our way to visit the Puget Sound a girl was lying on the deck laughing hysterically at the book she was reading. I thought…I have got to read that book so I took a peek at the title. I too laughed out loud when I read the story. It’s a good book to re-read every few years because I think the story changes with your age and point of view.
My very favorite books at Birch Grove Elementary School were written by Gertrude Chandler Warner. I wanted to be
a boxcar child. I wanted to live in the woods and make scrambled eggs over an open fire and solve mysteries with my clever mind. These books are the best and
not until a few days ago did I remember that one of the boys was named “Benny.” Could this have led to the naming of my youngest son Ben?
It’s certainly possible. The adventures of Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny gave me hours and hours of entertainment as a child. I own the copies of all these books from the elementary library. Some of the books still have the original library cards in them. My name Sandy A. is scrawled on the checkedout by line from way back in 1973.
So now I bet you’re wondering which books inspired the name for my fun-loving son named Jack? For this I really had to think…. I knew there was a character named
Jack somewhere, somehow in
all of the hundreds of books I read as a child.
Thenit came to me—Laura Ingalls Wilder. The Little House books. These were really fun to read. I especially liked Little House in the Big Woods because they made maple syrup just like we did when I was young. Cooking the sap over an open wood fire outside in the yard. Trust me there is nothing better than homemade maple syrup. Did you know it takes over 40 gallons of maple tree sap to make one gallon of syrup? That’s a whole lot of sap.
Anyway, do you remember the character Jack in the Little House books? He was their beloved dog! Great names have to come from somewhere and I guess I must love dogs as we now have five. Peace, a good book and delicious cooking to you!
Show me the books he loves
and I shall know the man far
better than through mortal
friends.
Dawn Adams
Tastes Like Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on an alpaca farm in South Haven, MN with her husband,
Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents,
Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious
helpings of home-style recipes.
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