Each month, we ask a member of faculty to tell us about one book that played an outsized role in making them who they are today. This month’s contribution to Words to Live By comes from Instructor and MFA Creative Nonfiction Mentor, Lezlie Lowe, BA (Hons)’96, MFA’16. The magic of her choice lies in simplicity, where she discovers happiness so often lives.
What book have you chosen?
Selma by Jutta Bauer.
How and when did you come across this book?
This book—a children’s book—came into my life when it was given to my pre-school-aged daughter as a gift.
What was it about the book that first stood out to you?
The simplicity and truth of this book are diabolical. When you’re a book family, you read a lot of books to your kids. A lot of them are good. A lot are garbage. Selma, which poses the question, “What is happiness?”, is deep and gutting and beautiful.
How did this book shape you?
I don’t know if it was the time or the place or if it was reading it over and over and over to my kids, but it cemented in me something all people know but that few of us really acknowledge: happiness—to the extent that each of us can have it—can be a choice.
What do you think it is about this book that made such an impact?
This book forces in its reader a reckoning: we all deal with different circumstances in our lives, and with unique challenges. But we all, at the same time, have control over our actions. And we can shape those actions to make ourselves happier, or even just plainly happy. Moreover, we can be happy with simple things. The very simplest things.
Have you reread this book? Does it resonate differently today than it did on first reading?
I mean, like, I just re-read it twice before I wrote this. After all, it’s a picture book with few words. And that’s part of its greatness: depth in brevity. In terms of insight, I suppose it’s not that the message has resonated more in the 20 years since I first read it, but every successive read is like re-committing to the premise.
