What is the value of a book? What does reading mean to you?
Tobi
I think books are magic. I’ve always loved the special type of magic to be found in them, in words woven together so tightly and so intricately that it builds worlds and kingdoms and people and dreams. I was a quiet child who never really had much to say, I preferred to lose myself in the pages of a book, travel to places a thousand miles away or places a writer created from their minds. They’ve been a constant companion since I could read, bound pieces of magic from ranging writers like Enid Blyton and Jacqueline Wilson and RL Stine to Charles Dickens and Shakespeare to Chimamanda and Buchi Emecheta and Chinua Achebe to Pemi Aguda and Ayobami Adebayo, taking me to London, Kansas, Owerri, Kaduna, Hogwarts, Narnia, making me cry, laugh, mourn, and most importantly, think deeply and shape my way in the world. I also really love the smell of books, it’s the top two smells and it’s not number 2.
I fell in love with the idea of The Northstar Library from the minute I heard about it; it feels like a manifestation of a girlhood dream to one day run a bookstore with a coffee and pastry shop attached. Lagos might need more bookstores,(we actually do, enough restaurants!) A library is so much better because the city — and its creatives — need more libraries, more third spaces, more books, more communities where people can commune and share ideas and self-expression. We hope to do our part in plugging the holes across the city and even the country and giving opportunities to younger ones like us, who feel the same magic we do when they open the pages of a book.
Zikora
The first book that made me cry was “Without a Silver Spoon” by Eddie Iroh. I was about five years old, reading it as part of my father’s incentive program where he paid me for each book I finished and reported on. As I sobbed through my tears, I realised the profound impact books could have on my emotions.
This experience opened my eyes to the range of feelings literature could evoke — from ecstatic joy to deep sadness. Books became an external emotional regulator for me. I discovered I could choose how I wanted to feel by selecting specific books:
• Rosamunde Pilcher to feel old
• Chinua Achebe to feel grounded and wise
• Wole Soyinka to feel intellectual
• Thomas Hardy to experience life as a mediaeval Englishman
• Charles Dickens when I wanted a mix of emotions
• Buchi Emecheta for when I needed anger
• Khaled Hussein for when I wanted to experience pain
• Chimamanda Adichie for companionship and warmth. When I wanted to feel like the chief observer.
Books became my gateway to different personas and experiences. They were my guides, allowing me to shapeshift emotionally and mentally, providing the perfect disguise for whatever mood or identity I wished to inhabit.
Life gets mundane and overwhelming. Books are a perfect escape.
Sekhani
Books are a way of escape from the real world. I remember when I started reading, and read mostly novels.
Most people think that reading fiction or creative nonfiction is a waste of time, but life is already hard enough.
I allow myself to escape into the world of the book I read, and I stay there until I’m ready to face reality again.
The Northstar Library is a dream come true for me, because I no longer have to worry about what to read next or hearing people judge me for what I read. It’s a gateway for my escape into the world of books.
Ore
The books most accessible to me as a child were The Bible and other christian literature. My mum and “uncle” (our Sunday school teacher) knew how to tell those legendary stories in a way that was fit for children’s consumption. They lodged strong truths in soft-shelled capsules and I took them all in, the hungry child that I was.
The first non-religious book I remember reading was The Lost World. My siblings and I had gone to my Uncle Johnson’s new home down the street where we went to church that morning to wait for our parents who were in a post-worship meeting. Uncle Johnson (actual relative) was a journalist and one of the most intelligent men I knew as a child. One of my favourite things about him was the fact that he knew the botanical names of random plants in my father’s garden.
When we entered the house on that dry Sunday afternoon, I gravitated towards the stack of books taking up half the unfurnished space in the living room. I’d never seen such a large, personal collection of non-religious reading material that wasn’t the stack of newspapers stored in a small room my father rented for storage. I skimmed through copies of books by Sydney Sheldon, John Grisham, Nora Roberts, and a host of other contemporary writers at the time, before I settled on The Lost World by Michael Chricton, because it was published in the year I was born.
Few chapters in, I was no longer in the red-carpeted, jollof-smelling, living room on James Daniel Street. I was on an Island in Costa Rica, shouting at George Baselton, urging him not to pick up the Tryannosaurus’s eggs. Unfortunately, he didn’t hear me, so he died.
This was how I discovered the wonder of words — how they transport you across worlds, give you new friends and guide you on the path to wisdom. Sometimes, when I read a book, I imagine myself sitting with the author, listening to them sharing their ideas with me, a form of indirect mentorship. It is in books that I find camaraderie and it is through words that I realised how small yet how beautiful my existence is in this grand universe. It is through words that I carve out my path in an ever changing world. And it is this gift that I hope to offer to other little girls through The Northstar Library.
Manolo
I do not remember the first time I read anything but I’ve been told that I was about three years old when I started reading. I was on a rampage, reading everything I could see aloud from “This House Is Not For Sale” signs to newspaper headlines. Newspapers, however, were definitely my first love. I don’t know what attracted me to the back of the papers (maybe it was the pictures or the puzzles) but I was there at the back, reading the headlines and stories of what turned out to be the sports section.
I used to get hand-me-down newspapers and magazines from my uncles until I was able to start buying them for myself. Complete Sports, Soccer Star, Complete Football, FourFourTwo, Time, The Economist, Tell and True Love were the ones I read the most. In the midst of all of that, I started reading non-fiction history books, biographies and autobiographies. These are still my favourite types of books to read to this day. Books in whatever form have been a way for me to get a front-row seat to the lives of people I know about, heroes and villains alike.
Joining the Northstar Library was a no-brainer for me. It is definitely going to be a hub for everyone to get and find direction (because… Northstar) from all types of books and express their art wholeheartedly. I really hope that one day, some like-minded children will read about me and my story as I have others before me.
Chinwendu
Since I was a child, spending hours poring through the pages of my parents’ medical and academia papers and textbooks, I have always known there was something special about books. While I could not understand anything on the pages, there was something soothing about sitting in my parents’ study, surrounded by the smell of books; both old and new. It is no surprise that even as an adult, I derive immense pleasure from sniffing the pages of books. Throughout my childhood, books had the ability to brighten my day and my family members knew this. My grandpa would randomly give me books and till date we have a tradition of giving each other books.
Books were my introduction to unique adventures; not just imaginative but real. I have travelled cities and made lifelong friends in literary gatherings because of books. Books have helped me process different emotions. They have served as anchors, holding me down on days when the business of living seeks to unmoor me. Books have helped me return to self, joy, hope and community, which is why I am thrilled by the idea of The Northstar Library. I am privileged to have been surrounded by people who made books accessible all my life, and it is my hope that through The Northstar Library, other young people have access to the books that will light up their lives just as books have done for me.
