The Beginning

July 22, 2019

I think I was always surrounded by books. I recall the typical children’s stories like Goodnight Moon and Pat the Bunny being around when I was young, and I am old enough to have been around when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone first hit the shelves. I even remember my paternal grandmother having multiple copies of books that she claimed she was reading at once (now, from experience, I know you can do that!). However, I distinctly remember when I fell in love with reading.

It was in 5th grade. I might have been pretending to be Matilda a bit and was carting around a large copy of Moby Dick with me, acting as if I was actually reading it. To this day, that is the only book that I read when I was in high school and then had to SparkNote, after each chapter, in order to understand . Anyway, I think I was feigning the role of a nerdy lover of literature; it wasn’t real. I was simply imitating a beloved character from a movie (see? Not even the beloved novel by Roald Dahl inspired this…).

However, in 5th grade, I stumbled upon Nancy Drew. My grandmother, the same mentioned before, had given us her original copies of the series, but it wasn’t even these that drew me into the world of words. I’m a bit ashamed to say that it wasn’t the original Carolyn Keene. The Nancy Drew that caught my attention was a more “modern” take on the female detective. I think Nancy was in college and the mysteries were a bit more gruesome. The author was using the pen name to carry on the series so that the newer readers could be introduced to the wonderful characters first created by Keene.

So I dove into the mystery genre full on. Once I read all the ones that my small elementary school had on its shelves, I did start devouring my grandmother’s loved copies. I craved the suspense and the world created by the authors. I could get lost in the images crafted in my head by the written word.

When wondering what to take on next, I asked my school librarian, and she directed me to a particular shelf. There I discovered realistic fiction, and the full effect of falling for reading complete. I was a goner. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s series centered around a character named Alice grabbed me and suddenly I was sitting on the gym floor, surrounded by screaming youngsters before school, completely transfixed by Alice growing up and her life; I didn’t even hear the yelling or the gossip. I was lost in Naylor’s fictional world. (If you are interested in falling down the rabbit hole of this series, here is a link: Alice series.) Funnily enough, I grew up with Alice as she was in elementary school and entered middle, high school, and college around the same time periods as me.

That was the beginning for me— it was 2001; I was 11, and I fell hard, hard for the written word. I’ve had bumps in my reading journey as academia and a career (and sometimes Netflix) have occupied my time, but I always find my way back, specifically to the YA genre that started it all for me.

I’m looking forward to sharing this love that I have found in literature that has moved and changed me in ways that I never knew were feasible.

Thanks for reading.