Children's Literature Autobiography

I love to read! Sometimes, when I can't choose what book to dig into next, I just read two or three at the same time. My recent favorites have been The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, The Time Travelers's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger, and Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and the entire Harry Potter series. Unfortunately, my life is so incredibly busy right now with school, work, and family commitments, that it is a struggle just to keep up with my book club's choice of the month. And my heart grieves just a little bit when I see the three unread books on my nightstand, and I know that it will probably be May before I can start them. How did I get this way?

I'm sure it was my parents' fault. They took me to the library on a regular basis and read to me every night before bed. The library was always one of my favorite places to be. We didn't just go to find books, but also for puppet shows and story hour. I loved sitting on the floor listening to the "library lady" tell stories. Then we would look for books. Many times I hauled so many books home from the library that I had a hard time carrying them into the house. But my mom didn't mind. She was also an avid reader, and I think it made her happy to see me get so excited about books. Bedtime stories were also a big deal in my family. Every night my sister and I would climb into bed with our dad and he would read us a story. I still remember some of the picture books, like There's a Monster at the End of this Book, The Little Rabbit, and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. We did this well into elementary school. When I started bringing home reading homework, I would read the selection to my dad and my sister, Ashley, and then Dad would read us a chapter book. We read Judy Blume's Fudge books and Beverly Cleary's Ramona books and classics like Heidi. Reading for 30 minutes or so each night before bed was just what we did. It was a part of our family culture. By the 3^rd grade I preferred to read exclusively to myself. The habit had taken hold.

I knew from the beginning that I was a good reader. And it was important to me to be the best. We didn't have AR back then, but I'm confident that if we had, I would have out-read everyone in my grade and probably most of the rest of the school. By 2^nd grade, I had all but left picture books behind in the dust. I felt like they were for kids who couldn't read well enough to get into chapter books. What an elitist idiot I was! I realize now that I have a huge gap in my children's literature experience because I focused on reading what the older kids were reading instead of enjoying the literature that was intended for my age and experience. And I totally missed the illustration boat. Even when I did read picture books, I only paid attention to the words in the story. It never occurred to me that the pictures also tell a story.

By the 3^th grade, I'm pretty sure my mom thought she had created a little reading monster. That was the year I read my first adult fiction book, V adapted by A.C. Crispin. I had seen bits and pieces of the TV miniseries, but since it was on past my bedtime, I had missed big chunks of the story. One day I saw the book at the grocery store and begged my mom to let me buy it with my allowance money. She was reluctant, but eventually gave in. So at 9 years old, I read my first 400+ page grown up book complete with cussing, violence and, eh-hem, adult relationships. I was hooked. By 6^th grade I was plowing through VC Andrews and Dean R. Koontz. I grew up in the Bible belt going to church every Sunday like all the other good little girls did, but boy did I rebel in the books I chose to read. I sought out the occult and psychological thrillers, all the while being careful to conceal from my parents the nature of what I was reading.

I look back on that time now with the eyes of a parent, and it makes me cringe. No wonder I was such a bitter, depressed, self-loathing teenager. I put garbage in my mind and got garbage right back out again. Thankfully, the monumental required reading load placed on the honors and advanced placement students at my high school severely limited the spare time I had for reading books of my own choosing. I hated required reading. The only books I can remember actually enjoying were To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men. In fact I rarely even finished the books we were assigned. I was a master at figuring out what the teacher was looking for and reading (skimming) just enough to be able to regurgitate A- material. So while works like The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles made it into my backpack, I can't really claim to have read them thoroughly. It was a seriously dry time in my literary history. The college years weren't much better. Occasionally, I'd pick up reading outside of my class assignments, but almost never fiction. I read a lot of self-help and inspirational Christian literature. I had forgotten that reading could be just for fun…for about 15 years. During that time I graduated from high school and college, got married, and had a couple of kids.

The dry spell lifted when one of the mommies in my kids' playgroup suggested that we should all read Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik and get together one Saturday morning without the kids to discuss it. Three years later, we have read at least 30 books together. We keep a journal of all our meetings and a brief synopsis of each book. Some of my favorite selections have been ones that I probably wouldn't have picked up on my own, like The Time Traveler's Wife and The Five People you Meet in Heaven. I have been challenged by my friends' thoughts and feelings about what we have read and by my revelations of my own assumptions and prejudices. Book Club has been one of the most enriching experiences of my life and I hope that 20 years from now our kids (we have 14 collectively) will carry on the tradition. And I hope to plant little book loving seeds into the hearts and minds of the kids I teach, because if those kids grow to love books, they will be able to navigate the desert of standardized tests and required reading to find a paradise of literature waiting for them.