The Mysterious Disappearance of the Reluctant Book Fairy by Elizabeth George Page A

must be admitted that as the years of Janet’s childhood progressed, matters didn’t alter much when it came to her relationship with her siblings. As for her parents, what can one say? They were back-to-the-landers who’d arrived on Whidbey Island to live a simple life described by hard work growing their own fruits and vegetables, raising goats for milk and cheese, practicing skilled carpentry for a local contractor (Dad) and establishing the village’s recycling center, its thrift shop, and its food bank while simultaneously home schooling six children (Mom) and then blissfully producing two more (Mom and Dad together, of course). So in the midst of what was a busy life, if one child had a nature that was rather whimsical, as long as she didn’t get underfoot or impede the daily progress of life among the Shores, chances were very good that she would remain largely unnoticed. Such was the case with Janet, who easily could have been lost in the shuffle entirely had she not possessed the weakest constitution of all the children.
    Thus put to the question, Janet’s parents would have noted only one characteristic about their sixth child that caused her to be modestly different from her brothers and sisters (those last two babies being girls, by the way). She was, unfortunately, a rather sickly sort, easily attacked by various viruses, bacteria, and germs, and in such a way that her childhood might best be described as one spent largely in bed with occasional forays into the real world where she would, in very short order, pick up another bug to fell her again.
    Most children find imprisonment in a sick bed both trying and tiresome. Some children— especially if they are one among many—find it comforting as they quickly surmise that the only moments that they will actually have the nurturing attention of their parents are those moments of illness. And a few children see the sickbed as a doorway to another world, brought to them courtesy of the dozens of books that one parent or the other rushes to the library to obtain, in the hope of keeping the invalid occupied.
    As you have no doubt surmised, Janet was of this last small group. Influenza? Strep throat? Chicken pox? Measles? Mumps? The common cold? An undiagnosed ailment of one kind or another? These were greeted with such enthusiasm by the child Janet Shore that one might have concluded she was headed for lifelong hypochondria had one not known of her penchant for losing herself in stories. She began with fairy tales: the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson being her favorites. She went on to mythology, preferring the Romans over the Greeks. She dipped into Biblical picture books in her younger years, and she quickly moved on to The Boxcar Children and the Little House books, graduating from there to Nancy Drew’s adventures as well as those of Trixie Belden, the Hardy Boys, and the Bobsey Twins, this last group unearthed from her grandmother’s house in New Hampshire and sent along when it became apparent that Janet was sure to read the entire collection of children’s books available at the village library before she was ten years old.
    One reason for Janet’s love of reading was, of course, the escape it provided from her constant illnesses and the additionally constant turmoil of living in a very small house with seven other children and two adults. The other reason for this love, however, had everything to do with Janet’s talent, that very special quality in her possession that her busy parents had never had the opportunity to notice.
    It is often said that individuals escape into books and what this means, of course, is that individuals escape their humdrum lives by sinking into the pages of a novel. But Janet Shore escaped into books to the fullest extent that that word can be used. Given a heart rending scene of emotion (Mary Ingalls going blind!), a thrilling adventure in a frightening cave (Tom, Huck, and