The furious squeaks of a marker on a whiteboard fill the classroom, an echoing, abstract melody given rhythm only by the staccato percussion of rain on the glass window beside me. Grey-woolen clouds blanket the sky, offering a cool, dark respite from the harsh overhead lighting that reflects off of my desk and into my eyes.  I don’t notice – my eyes sink below the desk, entranced by the portal sitting in my lap.  With each turn of the sea-spray weathered, dragon-breath singed pages, I fall deeper into its grasp, and into the world of Alagaësia.  I follow Eragon as he rides Saphira over the wintry peaks of the Beor Mountains, across the lifeless expanse of the Hadarac Desert, and into the fog-laden forest of Du Weldenwarden.  “Carter?”  A muffled voice peeks through my portal, and   I am thrown back into my physical being with a violent jolt.  My book snaps shut.  “Can you give us the answer here?” my teacher asks again.  With little confidence, and even less knowledge of what we were talking about, I can only stammer out a guess: “2- 24?”.  The class is silent, and the light patter of the rain on the window crescendos into a deafening roar.  “Very good Carter, I can tell you’ve been paying attention!”.  I breathe a sigh of relief and sink back into my chair, and after a quick check over my shoulder – it’s safe to reopen the portal.

I always thought that my mid-class excursions to another realm went unnoticed.  The truth is, no matter how hard I may have tried, I was never very good at hiding my reading. When I returned to my 4th grade classroom years later, my teacher joked that “the sound of a hardcover book clapping shut whenever I looked in your direction was a dead giveaway.” While my lack of focus in math may have negatively impacted my test scores, I trust that those forty-five minutes a day were not wasted on me.  As she said best, “I knew the friends you made and the places you visited in your books were far more important than multiplication tables.  And, you were never that bad at math for someone who didn’t hear a single one of my lessons.”  

Try as I might, no reading today feels the same as those mid-class journeys to another dimension.  There exists a certain indefinable quality in illegal reading, in the banned book, the book that exists only in a flashlight’s glare under the covers.  To read illegally, the reader must provide their complete focus, turning each page with quiet care and consideration so as not to arouse suspicion.    This focus transforms the very nature of reading; no longer are you a reader, but a participant.  You, too, gaze out on the landscapes the author paints, and you, too, converse with the characters he gives voice to.   No longer does the reader judge the book’s contents through the lense of the outside world, for it ceases to exist altogether.  There is no meaning to take back with you, no knowledge to be saved for the future – the author’s words are all that ever have been, and all that ever will be.

I understand the necessity in dissecting literature, finding meaning to the author’s words, so that we may learn their truth and apply it to the real world.  These actions provide structure, and allow us to get the most out of a piece of writing.  They will, however, never replace the feeling of illegal reading.  I look back on memories of Eragon, Hogwarts, and Alex Ryder with the same wistful appreciation as I do my most treasured childhood memories.  The fact that they came within the bindings of a book make them no less real.