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First Favorite Book
This was my earliest memory of a story being read to me. My mother would read this book to my sister and me before bed. It's a story about a mother who said that no matter her son goes, she will find him. My favorite part was, "If I had a little airplane, I'd fly across the sky. I'd look and and look for you as every day went by." I can still hear my mother's voice. -
Accelerated Reader
One of my favorite programs, when I was growing up, was Accelerated Reader (AR). I loved picking out books from the library, reading them, and then taking a comprehension test over them. I always did fairly well. My school had a lot of incentives for taking AR, which is one of the reasons why kept reading -
Barnes and Noble
One of the things that mother liked to do was to take my sister and me to Barnes and Noble. She would always let us pick out a book each time we'd go. When I was little I used to pick out sticker books, but as I grew older I actually started to pick actually reading books. This really helped foster my love for reading. To this day, I still take trips to Barnes and Noble and my library continues to grow. -
Favorite Teacher
When I was in seventh grade, my favorite teacher was my English teacher Mrs. D. She really helped instill my love for reading. She really loved to read and she shared that passion with us. One of her favorite things to do was at the last ten minutes of class, she would read us a book of varying genres. The one I remember most was called Truesight by, David Stahler Jr. I ended up purchasing it and reading it on my own. -
Favorite Book
My mom introduced me to the book Flowers in the Attic by, V.C. Andrews. And to this day, it has continued to be my favorite book. I like this book because the writing is eloquent. Because of this book, I wanted to write just like V.C. Andrews. Fun fact! I have read this book seven times! -
Favorite Middle School Book
Mrs. D. was the one who introduced me to one of my favorite books in middle school, The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. I liked this book so much that I wanted to read more stories by her, which I did. I ended up reading Rumblefish and That Was Then, This Was Now. -
Summer Reading Program
Every summer, Barnes and Noble has a summer reading program. My mom would always encourage me to participate. The prizes weren't much but gave me the satisfaction and the incentive of wanting to read. Each year, I would participate. Now I do my own reading program where I count how many books I read each year. Reading for fun is beneficial. -
High School Teacher
When I Was a junior in high school, my high school teacher made sure the books we read were engaging and that we could relate them to our lives. One book we read was called The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. I guess you could say it was memoir. In the book, it talked about the individual things the soldiers carried. One of our assignments was to bring in something, tangible or intangible and describe why it would be something we would carry with us. -
Young Adult Books
My love for reading died down after high school. I didn't read for fun anymore I think it was because when I started college, I had so many textbooks to read that it made it difficult to want to read anymore. However, when I started working with fifth graders at my new job. They were reading a lot young adult books that used to read. They were excited to talk to me about the books, which is what helped jumpstart my reading again. -
Reading Challenge
I joined Goodreads after so many people asked me why I wasn't on it. I wish I would have known about it sooner because I used to keep track of the all the books I read on a piece of notebook paper, which I lost. Now I can keep track electronically. I decided to join the reading challenge and try to read 20 books by the end of the year. So far, I have read 5. I stopped reading, but the only way to continue was to reignite the spark.
