On Cats and Carpets

"There was a welcoming chirrup from Tibby as I entered the front door of the school house. She was at the top of the stairs, yawning widely, her claws gripping the carpet rhythmically as she stretched.
Plain Wilton carpet costs an enormous amount of money, as I discovered when I was driven to replace the threadbare stair carpet last year. Tibby has seen to it that the top and bottom stair are generously tufted, much to the horror of Mrs. Pringle, and to my lesser sorrow.
It is sad, I know, to see such maltreatment of one's furnishings, but one must look realistically at life. Either one has no cat and plain Wilton, or one has a cat and tufted Wilton. I prefer the latter."

-- Miss Read, Farther Afield

On Modern Literature...

"I am heartily sick of books from Caxley library -- all termed 'powerful' by their reviewers (and in future I shall steer clear of any with this label) which give the suffering reader a detailed account of the bodily functions of their main characters. If the author has such a paucity of ideas that he must pad out his 300 pages with reiterated comments on his hero's digestive, alimentary and productive systems I am sorry for him; but I don't see why he should be encouraged.

To have a heroine who does nothing but climb, regularly every thirty pages, from one bed into another is, to my mind, not only inartistic. It is worse. It is tedious."

--Village Diary, Miss Read

On Small-Town Living...

"Sitting alone, in that quiet classroom, with only the tick of the wall-clock and the faint shouts of my approaching pupils to be heard, I felt, perhaps more keenly than ever before, just what it means to be a villager -- someone whose welfare is of interest (sometimes of unwelcome interest) to one's neighbors -- but always to matter."

--Village Diary

The Sweet Tin: A Useful Teaching Tool

"There are some foolish and narrow-minded theorists who would condemn the use of a sweet tin in schools, dismissing this valuable and pleasant adjunct to discipline with such harsh words as 'bribery' and 'pandering to animal greed.' I stoutly defend the sweet tin. If the good Lord has seen fit to provide sweets and children's tastes to match them, then let us take advantage of the tools that lie at hand."

--Village Diary

How I Met Miss Read

I was working as a shelver at the Urbana Free Library (Urbana, IL) in the early 1990's. One of my tasks was "shelf reading," the process of checking the labels on the spines of the books to make sure they were shelved in proper alphabetical, Dewey order, and reshelving any that were out of order. At this time I was a bit of an Enya fan, and one day I came across a book which bore the same title as one of my favorite Enya songs--Miss Clare Remembers. I was intrigued, but not enough to read the book at that time. Many years later I read one of the "Fairacre" novels--now I can't remember how I decided to pick it up--and I was hooked. From then on, Miss Read's novels have become standard bedtime and comfort reading material for me. I finally did read Miss Clare Remembers. You should read it, and all Miss Read's charming novels, as well.