The right book I was given

I found this quote on Pinterest and it got me to thinking about how my love of reading started at a very early age. Part of it was my need to be able to read my dad's Sports Illustrated with out having to wait for him to get home from work, the other part was reading was always a positive thing in our family.

To this day I still always laugh about being sent to my room when I was in trouble, especially in those feisty teenage years. I loved being sent to my room, my books were in there and no one was going to take them out. You could take my TV, my phone, my video games, but my books, for one I have too many of them to move them quickly and two reading was always treated as something sacred.

In my first blog post I posted a photo of me with my Gramma, I think around age 2 +/- a few months. She was (and still is) a huge supporter of my love of reason. My Gramma has a way of finding books related to whatever is that I was obsessing over at the time. I was super interested in WW 2, she got me books like the Diary of Anne Frank, Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (which was a favorite because the main characters name is Annemarie and my middle name is Annemaree), and The Devil's Arithmetic by Jan Yolen. She did the same thing when I had my Titanic phase, and especially my John F. Kennedy obsession. I would get home from school (and by home I mean her house) and she would ask me about what I was reading, if I got confused by what I was reading I could ask her (mind you kids under 25 years old this was before The Google so Gramma was my Google).

It wasn't just my Gramma but I recall moments like this with pretty much everyone in my family. Heck even to this day I will still call my Dad and ask him how to pronounce a word, or to explain a concept to me. I just learned where the phrase "don't drink the kool aid" came from (add Cults to my list of obsessions).

The book (or should I say series) that really sparked not only my love of reading but eventually my love and interest in Early Childhood Education was the Babysitters Club by Ann M. Martin.

I started reading the Baby-Sitters Little Sister series. I would finish them so fast I don't know how my parents kept up. I remember the book store at the mall (Mall 205 to be exact for you Portland folks) I would drag my mother in there go straight to the Babysitters Club section to see if a new book came out (again this was before Al Gore created the world wide web 😋) and beg for her to get me a new one.

Then I moved on to the Babysitters Club. Luckily, those scholastic book order forms we got a school had this Babysitters Club-Club where you got a book every month or something like that (like Amazon minus the two-day free shipping). I basically had every book from both series. The day I donated those books hurt a bit, and I hope whoever bought them (my name is in all of them) is not only inspired to read but also to think about working with children.

So what was the right book you were given at a young age that sparked your joy in reading? Feel free to leave a comment below.

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Interested in the books I named above click the Links below:




This is the first version of the Diary of Anne Frank I got. Obviously there are newer ones, with updates as her father released more entries before he died. But for posterity I thought I'd post this one (also if you are ever in Amsterdam, go to the Anne Frank Haus, trust me)