Which Books Have Shaped Your Life?
Woo-hoo! Today is National Reading Day, an effort to encourage reading among children ages pre-K to third grade.
How will you celebrate? Me, I’ll end the day like most others since I was a little girl: with a book.
I remember Amelia Bedelia and Where the Wild Things Are, and later, I often perused my grandparents’ Readers’ Digests while my cousins crowded around the television, watching the Donnie & Marie Show. Back then I read just to read — because I could, not because I was necessarily interested at age 6 in an article titled “I Woke Up After a 30-Year Coma and Fell In Love With My Husband All Over Again.”
Do you remember the books you read when you were young, those that shaped your lifelong love of reading? C’mon, share!
Posted by: Morgan J.
January 23rd, 2012 at 1:53 pm
I have fond memories of my fourth-grade teacher reading Caddie Woodlawn to the class. I can still recall the excitement I felt when she would lift the book off the corner of her desk and I knew she was going to read another chapter. I also loved The Babysitter’s Club books… there must have been well over 100, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss a one!
January 23rd, 2012 at 6:08 pm
Harriet the Spy, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, all great books, and so hard to put down.
January 23rd, 2012 at 10:41 pm
Two books in my youth changed my life. The first (read in 4th grade) was a Wrinkle in Time. The dark, twisting story that didn’t talk down to me just drew me in. The second (read in 6th grade) was The Hobbit, and eventually lead to the Lord of the Rings. The depth and detail Tolkien provided was what made me want to become a writer someday.
January 24th, 2012 at 12:04 pm
By far : To Kill A Mockingbird, and Shadowlands.
January 24th, 2012 at 1:47 pm
A Series of Unfortunate Events, Holes, Everything is Illuminated
January 24th, 2012 at 10:02 pm
I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder “Little House” series and was always perturbed when the television show strayed from the plot of the books. “That didn’t happen in the book!” is still one of my most common comments when watching a movie based on a book. I also loved the Box Car Children. There was just something so brave about four children living alone in a box car and taking care of each other. Like John, I discovered a Wrinkle in Time when I was in 6th grade and have lost count of how many times I have read it myself and later out loud to each of my children.
January 26th, 2012 at 1:12 am
One of my professors in college recommended Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage”. A book that taught me to not place self limits on my potential to achieve what I want in life.
The recommendation to read that book was worth the price of my undergraduate degree.