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I just had to burst out laughing when I saw this book pop up on my feed this morning.

FLASHBACK STORYTIME WITH JENICA

So, growing up, my mom always encouraged me and my sister to read good books. Every school year (we were homeschooled,) she would place a big order of age-appropriate, topic- relevant books. Classics, historical fiction, Newberry and Caldecott winners... we were almost never told "You have to read X book by Y date and write Z pages about it", but were encouraged to read both for pleasure AND edification. We were let loose in our local library every few weeks, and (during the school year) as long as the books we chose weren't "twaddle", we could check out as many as we liked.
Operative words: "weren't twaddle". (Twaddle is a word from the Charlotte Mason school of thought on education, meaning, basically, junk food in the form of literature.)
So, much to mini!Jenica's displeasure, guess what kind of books were off the menu? Star Wars books.
I lived Star Wars as a kid. I thought and daydreamed of little else, I thought that anyone who didn't like Star Wars must be a terrible person, and yes, I adored the Phantom Menace when it came out (Hey, I was 10 years old. Did YOU have amazing judgement at 10?)

So, when I saw this book in my best friend's room one day, it was like Eve in the garden with that sweet, sweet forbidden fruit.
She gladly loaned it to me, and I stuffed it under my jacket, smuggled it into the house, and hid it under my mattress.
Reading that book in stolen moments was exhilarating. A young Obi-Wan dueling with a real sword, a queen with a dress of shifting colors, a nefarious Prince with wicked plans... and did I mention STAR WARS?

Then my mom changed my bedsheets.

I was convinced I would get in trouble. Mom hated twaddle, I thought! But when she called me into my room to ask me about this book she'd found under my mattress... she was laughing!
She asked me why I'd hidden it, and, sheepishly, I told her, expecting some kind of doom to fall on me.

No doom. She gave me a hug, said that it was, in fact, okay to read books "just for fun", and admonished me to treat a book that had been loaned to me with better care.

I can't rate this book in terms of literary quality, but I can rate it in terms of warm fuzzies, and the Mark of the Crown will always have a place in my heart!