Tim Young, curator at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, is on our team (wait for it):
“I grew up with a penchant for reading all the time, anything I could pick up. A lot of comic books. I was mad about comic books, mad about cartoon books,” Young shares with a sheepish grin. “But there was nobody looking down their nose saying ‘they’re not real.’”
Young’s childhood fascination never abated. The door to his office is plastered by miscellaneous placards, but the Marvel Comics poster dominates. Young’s mother was a nurse and his father worked as a mechanic for a national airline. They were Tulsa bourgeois — an earnest, lower middle-class family with four kids who went through the local public school system. Tim, the third boy, and his younger sister spent their free time and summers at the public library. He recalls being dropped off in the mornings and floating eagerly among the books until his wide-eyed presence became routine. In reading he found an unusual calm but a simultaneous torrent of new worlds and stimulation.
“The book that the librarian stopped me from checking out, because I’d read it so many times, was called the D’Aulaires’ Picture Book of Greek Myths. I was obsessed.”
See also:
- The secret society
- The Truth About the East Wind
- What are the new liberal arts? (comment thread)
- Of blogs and bridges
The original Snarkmarket post on D’Aulaires’, from 2006, is missing from our archives, leaving only broken links behind.
This can mean only one thing.
YOUUU-RUSSS.
2 comments
LOVE. THIS.
I believe this is one of the few, appropriate times to say “Sqqqueeeee!” I think the illustration of Athena bursting out of Zeus’ head is forever etched into my own.
Next time I visit my parents, I’ll have to check to see if my copy is still on the shelf. My name’s written on the inside of the front cover in black crayon.