The Life-Changing Book
Their teacher explained that his life-changing book was The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming. Not exactly highbrow literature, you might think, but he picked it up at a used bookstore before embarking on a long train journey and it was the first book he’d ever read for pleasure. It turned him into a reader.
I recalled my life-changing book immediately.
When I was nine and visiting my paternal grandparents in a tiny town in central Illinois, I lived for Tuesday and Saturday afternoons, the only days the town library was open. The library was a single storefront room, inadequately cooled by several oscillating fans. It didn’t have enough shelving for all the books, so the children’s books sat in stacks on the floor.
In one of these stacks, I found my life-changer. Horace by Elizabeth Urquhart.
Horace is the story of a little girl living in London whose mother sends her to the greengrocer to buy mushrooms. She’s very excited by this prospect because something good always happens to her on the mushroom errand. Once she found half a crown. This time, she finds a baby dragon crying by the side of a bridge. The dragon’s name is Horace, and when she helps him find his way home, he invites her to tea.
Greengrocer? What the heck was that? What good would half of a crown do? Wouldn’t it fall off your head? And what’s with this “tea” business?
My grandmother, with her fourth-grade education couldn’t help me with any of it, including how to pronounce “Urquhart”. For the first time, I had to interpret the meaning of words from their context.
In addition to that life-changer, the charming and whimsical story began my life-long love of British children’s fantasy.
Sadly, Horace is long out-of-print. A couple of years ago, however, I was able to buy a discarded library copy through AbeBooks. The story may be old-fashioned, but it’s still just as charming and whimsical as it was when I was nine and read it for the first time.
Thank you, Elizabeth Urquhart, for changing my life.
I love the story of your life changing book. If I reach way way back, the first book that I fell in love with would have to be The Rabbits Wedding by Garth Williams. I loved the story and the illustrations in that book, but my favorite thing about it was that my father would read it to me. He even made a tape recording of himself reading it so that when he traveled I could still listen to him and follow along in the book.
Hi, Shannon.
Thanks for stopping by! That’s a wonderful story about your father. I have fond memories of my own CH reading a story to our daughter — sadly, she’d chosen a Golden Book about Barbie on a modeling assignment…with dolphins I think. Remembering the prissy voice he used for Barbie’s dialogue still makes me laugh — and she says “I remember that book. That was a good book.” (It was not…)
Dear E.J.,
I know you wrote this some time ago, but it has only just come to my attention. I was 18 when I wrote ‘Horace’, during a summer holiday I spent with my friend Rosita, who did the illustrations. I never dreamed it would be published, but I reckoned without my mother — a very go-getter kind of lady — who cornered the Dutton publisher at a cocktail party and urged him to read the manuscript. He told me later that he had been reluctant, but changed his mind when he read the story.
I sympathize with your difficulty over my surname. It was a difficult mouthful, and I wasn’t sorry when I managed to change it.
All the best,
Elizabeth Rapley
Oh, my goodness, Elizabeth. I was so thrilled when I saw your comment! How wonderful that you were able to share Horace’s creation with your friend–and how impressive that you managed it when you were so very young. Kudos to your mother too–I’ll be forever grateful to her and to Dutton for bringing that book to the world, and to the attention of an introverted little girl who had always wanted to believe magic was real, if only you knew where to look. (By the way, years later, when my husband and I saw the movie Local Hero, with a main character named Gordon Urquhart, my first thought was for ‘Horace’–“Aha! So that’s how you pronounce it!” Thank you so much for sharing your book’s creation story. I’m convinced that without ‘Horace’, my life would have been very different.
I love Horace I read it as a child I have been liking for years today I found it unfortunately I can’t find it to purchase I would love to share this book with my grandchildren
Hi, Mary! I was able to find it through an online used book service (Abe Books, I believe). It was a library copy, but it still has the cover! The one I read as a child didn’t have a cover, but if I recall correctly, it had a little dragon embossed on the cover, which is what prompted me to pick it up. Thank goodness I did!
Elizabeth, as I was searching for a copy of “Horace” to purchase, I saw your reply on this thread. I also saw an obituary of a Horace Urquhart who was born in 1898. Is it possible that he was your grandfather and the inspiration for your baby dragon?
I really appreciated reading this Ellen. I am also a huge fan of British children’s literature. My early favorites were books by Edward Eager (American, but influenced) and E. Nesbit. I absolutely loved the idea that one could be living an ordinary life and fall into a magical adventure, and of course the English settings were charming and just exotic enough. I’m sorry I never had the chance to read Horace.