Dear Reader,
As a child, whenever I saw a double-decker bus that had been converted into a home, I was filled with envy. I wanted one so badly! A single-decker bus would have sufficed, as long as it was eggshell blue with floral curtains and kept me always travelling so I didn’t have to go to school.
The dream of a travelling home has stuck with me over the years — a bus, a balloon, a barge, a horse-drawn caravan, a caboose at the back of a train. I’m not yet able to live in such a home, but I am able to create a fictional family who does. And if I’m taking the fictional option, why not go the whole hog and have the travelling home stuffed with books?
Oh, my aching heart! Travel and books. My two favourite things. (Cake also vies for a top spot, but that’s easily tossed into a story!) And so Miriam-Rose Cohen danced into my imagination, together with her little brother, Nathaniel, and her father, Zedekiah. Mim, Nat and Dad travel the world in an old wooden caravan full of books, some for sale, some that are finding their way home. Flossy, their faithful horse, pulls the caravan along, choosing where they’ll go. It’s always to the place where they are most needed, a place where the right book will be put into the right hands, to change a life forever.
But of course, every book changes a life in some way, big or small. A book might introduce its reader to the joys of crocheting tea cosies, inspire an act of kindness, or spark a childhood memory that brings a warm, gentle glow to the heart. Whatever the result, Mim is always filled with wonder. Because books are magic.
So my childhood dream home, the double-decker bus, has been transformed into a caravan filled with books, love, whimsy and a wisp of magic. It started in my imagination and turned into a story. One day, it might become real. Or is it real already?
As Miriam-Rose Cohen says, ‘The line between books and real life is not as clear as most people suppose.’
Happy travelling!
Katrina Nannestad
