Childhood Bonding with Fictional Characters

Sometimes as children we feel a strong bond with certain characters, almost believing that the characters are real rather than make-believe. One such feeling of connection is still vivid in my mind: when I read "Ellen Tebbits," by the great children's author Beverly Cleary, and believed that the eight-year-old main character's secret was just between her and me, no one else. The secret was trivial, even quaint from today's perspective: Ellen's mother made her wear woolen long underwear. I didn't have to wear long underwear, but something about sharing a secret with this fictional character made me feel fiercely protective of her, and I hoped and believed that no one else would learn her secret and embarrass her about it. I think I believed that if I wished it enough, no one else would even read the book besides me! Of course part of my connection was that, like every little girl, I loved having secrets. As a girl with three brothers, I sometimes had to protect my own secrets very carefully! (Yes, brother K., I still remember when you read my diary!). But it also seems to me now that this bond with Ellen was an early instance of the intense connections I have so often, over the years, felt with characters in books.