Story: 9. ) Treasure Books / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE; A Rain of Booklight

Treasure Books

   ‘The differense from a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is on the inside and most of a person is on the outside.’ - Anna *

    Maybe only two or three times in a lifetime one comes across a book that is completely unforgettable and it becomes for you your own particular treasure. You can pin significant turns in your life to it; it sparks a definite chain of incidents that you will always know stemmed from that book. It speaks to you: knowing you. In a strange way it knows the real you; and you know ‘it.’ Though you can hardly call it, an ‘it;’ for to you it has life of its own. Somewhere deep inside it resonates with every fibre of your being; and almost without realizing it, your core-being is stamped with a deep affirmation of its identity and confirmation of its hitherto unwoken dreams.
   One such book in my own life is Mister God, this is Anna; by Fynn; (illustrated by Papas;) a close second are its two sequels Anna’s Book, and Anna and the Black Knight. The first book was a bestseller in the 1970’s, and was still around in the 80’s, and even into the 90’s, (but by then it was demoted or downgraded into Collins Religious Division.) It once blossomed all over the world and touched many lives. But now Anna and Fynn have faded from the scene completely; her beloved ‘Mister God’ an embarrassment to today’s anti-God society. The books are no longer in the local library; they have even been thrown out of ‘churches:’ innocence has largely departed from the populous as a whole, and the institutional church couldn’t cope with Anna’s liberty. For her opinion of church was that you only needed to go once, because ‘once you’d got the message you didn’t need to go back; if you did, well, you hadn't got it, had you?’ and Anna ‘had it,’ so never needed to go back.
   Anna’s whole life, filled to the brim with love and joy was a jubilant going forward into the unknown with her delicious but sometimes scary, 'Mister God;' and the only place where she knew he lived was ‘…in yer middle!’
   Anna was a five-year-old Cockney waif, found in the 1940’s dockside streets of London, by Fynn, a caring and intelligent young man who took her home to live with Mum and him, and their motley collection of the lost and bedraggled. And, until her tragic death less than three years later, she never made it to eight, she taught them all where God was.
   Anna found good and God where others didn’t. Her best friends were the prostitutes from the house down the street; and they adored her: she found them all angels: ‘cos they don’t know they’re beautiful.’ ‘But they are, ain't they, Fynn?’ This stunning, mind-boggling book, relevant to every generation, is a true story, it all really happened and it deserves a place on every bookshelf; it could still change the world; its impact needed now, more than ever.
  It came into my life not long after I had found out, I was found out on the inside, which wonder of wonders made me very happy. Mister God, this is Anna was given me, surreptitiously, in a brown paper bag, by a beautiful elderly churchman who could see me on the inside, too. But it was not until many years later that I understood why he had given it to me.
   It wasn't until after I had escaped the net and traps of the institutions and swam and flew freely, at liberty from all fishbowls and birdcages that I truly comprehended the book. (I have since reread it again, twice.) Its simple but glorious message struck me anew at once, and wonderfully confirmed and affirmed my new liberty. And, like he hoped, I never went back.
   From then on I wrote continuously, and wrote my way out of the next level of the trap; out of every vestige of its invisible and crippling, internal effects – the trap ‘in my middle.’ And I followed in unspeakable joy further and further this adorable, red-headed, little six-year-old, to places within me both boundless and wide. You only need one book, one TREASURE BOOK, to hear a message that seems to have been written just for you.

                                       

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* The opening sentence of the book, Mister God, this is Anna; by Fynn, illus. Papas; William Collins & Sons Ltd., 1974, (ninth reprint 1976,) London. (This British edition of the book has a wonderful, illuminating Introduction by Vernon Sproxton.) Anna’s Book; Henry Holt and Company, 1987, New York. Anna and the Black Knight; William Collins & Sons Ltd., 1990, London.