The incredible power of notebooks

The Incredible Power of Notebooks

A teacher shares how a simple notebook can hold a piece of life

There are objects that travel through time in silence, yet with extraordinary strength. Notebooks, for instance. Faithful companions throughout school, mistakes, dreams, and first discoveries, they are much more than blank pages: they are containers of memory, small emotional archives that tell the story of who we were and who we’ve become.

We received a very special letter from a teacher, who with genuine and heartfelt words, told us the story of her very first notebook. Reading it felt like opening a drawer full of collective memories: inside, we found the smell of fresh paper, the thrill of the first day of school, and the freedom of childhood imagination.

We decided to share her letter with you, because it speaks about our work in a way we never could: it shows how, through a notebook, one can talk about growth, identity, freedom, and even gentle rebellion.

Here are her words.

THE INCREDIBLE POWER OF NOTEBOOKS

Once upon a time, there were notebooks. And thank heavens, they still exist!
In this digital world, I fear they may one day disappear. That’s why, knowing their silent power to preserve memory, I hope they will be defended just like the values of democracy.

My very first school notebook is a treasure I still go back to often. I read it to reconnect with that little girl I used to be—gripping her pencil with raw strength, carving the paper rather than writing, making countless holes, and assigning anarchic colors to animals. The zebra was red and black, and the goose was bluish. I had a very tolerant teacher, especially for the 1970s.

I remember the joyful excitement of the day I went to buy my first notebooks for elementary school. They were sacred objects. There was only one stationery shop in our neighborhood, and we all went there. The shopkeeper first showed me some with Holly Hobbie on the cover, but I picked one from the “boy’s pile”—the one with Peg-Leg Pete. I was an avid reader of Topolino (Mickey Mouse comics).
I still can’t understand how I could have chosen the mischievous villain—I was shy and far from daring. Maybe I wanted to mislead the teacher! Maybe I was already dreaming of a sort of academic rebellion, which, truth be told, came later in life. Most certainly, I wanted to be a little original.
So on my little notebook, as a way of letting my personality shine through, I often practiced going off-topic in my compositions, not knowing the times tables at lightning speed, and mastering the art of getting them wrong with style.

Plastic covers weren’t a thing back then, so the choice of the cover image said a lot about who you were. Our teacher, Ms. Carraro—whose first name we didn’t even know, nor did we assume she had one like us mere mortals—would always flash a big smile when she handed my notebook back. I later found out she loved comics too!

That first notebook had everything in it: words copied from the blackboard, notes from the teacher, drawings, and grades. It was a true guidebook to school life. That’s why we chose it carefully. It had to withstand the crumbs from snacks wrapped in napkins, and its pages had to endure those of us who, like me, didn’t write gracefully but plowed through and erased mercilessly.

Fifty years after that day I picked the unexpected image of a clumsy rebel and wrote on that thick, fragrant paper, I can say: I made a winning choice!

Simona Obialero