“A good bookshop is just a genteel black hole that knows how to read.” –Guards! Guards!*

 *I would feel strange if I didn't put a nice quote there - PTerry, obviously ;)

There have been many books in my life, from children books with Hans Christian Andersen’s stories, teenage books like ‘Ucho od śledzia’ and ‘Ronja, córka zbójnika’, STAR WARS novels (I still have two shelves of those ;) ) and, of course, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. I have to admit that some of the books that should accompany me in my early years of life, like ‘Chronicles of Narnia’, ‘Wizard of Oz’ or ‘Peter Pan’, have shown up only recently in my list of must-reads. Yup, I like catching up on those things, so that I can let the next generation know what’s worth reading and what’s not ;)

Unsurprisingly, it took me a while to decide what book I wanted to write about and finally settled on the one that popped into my mind first:

‘The Seven Rainbow Ghosts’

It is a picture book my mom used to read to me when I was a kid. The story is pretty simple: after a storm, the world is gray because the water had washed the colors out. As the weather gets better, rainbow comes and brings the Seven Rainbow Ghosts: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. Each carries a bucket of paint and a brush they use to repaint the world and when they have finished, they disappear, along with the rainbow, leaving a beautiful, colorful world behind.

This book has become one of my absolute favorites, and even though it landed in the attic when I was growing up and keeping such a book in my room would have been embarrassing, a couple of years ago it came back downstairs and I simply can’t bear the thought of it disappearing from my room again. I am very fond of it, as it is visually beautiful – it is full of colorful illustrations that acquire more colors as each Ghost finishes his work (I used to stare at them for hours), but also, it brings back great memories of the times when the world was full of wonders.

Last week I even found myself wishing the Seven Ghosts would descend from the sky and repaint the world – I’m so sick of this everlasting whiteness. The Ghost I’d be most thrilled to see at work right now is the one I always loved the most - Blue. According to the book, he has long hair that smell like sea and he spends most of his time high in the air, painting the clouds away.

…. Guys, seriously, what’s the hold-up? Enough of this winter already!