The literary company we keep

Kim Kovach

Recently I thought about the phrase, “You are judged by the company you keep.”

A person’s character and reputation can be reflected by the friends and influences they choose. That may be true for the friends we associate with in real life, but what about the literary company we keep?

As a 6-year-old first-grader, I spent a lot of time with a pair of siblings named "Dick and Jane." Dick and Jane lived in a quiet, clean suburban neighborhood, just like I did. They had a dad who went to work each day and a mom who stayed home. Me, too! Dick and Jane seemed polite and well-behaved, just like my brother and me.

Dick and Jane had a little sister named Sally, as well as a dog named Spot and a cat named Puff. I enjoyed reading about their daily lives. I liked looking at the colorful illustrations of this family on each page of our reading books in Mrs. Hansen’s first-grade class. I could never understand why the children always repeated their words: “Look! Look! See Spot run. Spot runs fast. Run, Spot, run!” For me, that repetition slowed down the action.

In second grade, I met an even more charming, adventurous family at my local library. I enjoyed checking out books about "The Bobbsey Twins." They were two sets of fraternal twins; Nan and Bert were the older twins and Freddie and Flossie were the younger twins. Those kids had lots of adventures and did not repeat their words to slow down the action!

By third grade, I discovered families from different backgrounds and different time periods with lots of siblings. My favorites included "The Five Little Peppers" series by Margaret Sidney, the "All of a Kind Family" series written by Sydney Taylor and the "Little House" books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

By fourth and fifth grade, my literary companions became a little more edgy. My mom always let me order books through the Scholastic Book Club. That’s where I met my new friends, Pippi Longstocking and Harriet the Spy. Pippi Longstocking was a young girl who lived by herself and allowed her horse into the house. Pippi was nothing like me and that’s what made reading about all of her adventures so much fun!

Harriet the Spy wore glasses and liked to observe her neighbors. She wrote down interesting tidbits about people in her notebook. My friend, Irene, and I walked around with little notebooks to jot down unusual goings-on in our neighborhood. We ended up spying on Irene’s relatives who lived on the top floors of her big house. Her frugal grandfather walked around the house turning off the lights. Her paranoid uncle always put tape on his closed bedroom door so that he would know if anyone entered his room when he was not at home. Who knew that curiosity and eavesdropping would turn out to be valuable skills for a fiction writer?

In high school and college, my literary companions were an international group published from the 1800s to the mid-1900s. I spent a lot of time with Charlotte Bronte, Somerset Maugham, Nikolai Gogol, and Anton Chekhov.

Over my adult life, my selection of reading companions has broadened to authors from Ireland, Hungary, Spain, Mexico, Iceland, and around the world. American authors, especially southern writers, continue to draw me into their colorful lives filled with drama and relationships and everyday life. No happy endings required.

Kim Kovach meets the most interesting people in the pages of books as well as through her fiction writing classes via Zoom! Visit Kim’s website at www.kimkovachwrites.com