Book Her

Noelle Aleksandra Hufnagel

When nobody is watching, my daughter steals books. She’s some kind of book stealing criminal actually, and she’s only five. She has shelves and shelves of them in her room, but she’s no longer interested in those books anymore. No, now she only wants the ones that don’t belong to her.

I should’ve seen this coming. Even as a baby, when I would read to her, she would grab at the corner of books and tug, pulling them beneath her blanket. At first, it was cute. Precious even. But if I tried to take a book away from her, she would get this crazed look in her eyes and start to cry, and not a normal cry, but one of those demonic Rosemary’s baby kind of cries, so loud and horrific that her face would turn different shades of blue. In order to make her stop, I would eventually give in, letting her keep the book with her in the crib, watching all night from a rocking chair in the corner to make sure she didn’t get a paper cut or poke out an eye or try to put it in her mouth. As it turns out, I was enabling her even then.

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Header Image by Kelcey Parker Ervick.

Spot illustrations for Fall/Winter 2023 issue by Dana Emiko Coons

Other spot illustrations courtesy Kelcey Parker Ervick, Sarah Salcedo, & Waringa Hunja

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