I am part of the latest roundup on Sean Taylor’s Bad Girls Good Guys blog (and shush, I’m totally a good girl.)
We’re talking about reading as children and how it affects us as adult readers and writers. I ran my mouth for a while (I know that shocks you) and I may expound on this topic as a column later this month. I’m really amazed by how many of my students report that they never read anything for fun, only what’s required for school…. but they eat up stories in various other media forever, from movies and TV shows to TikTok. It’s not imagination they eschew, it’s the act of reading, and why is that? An educator I interviewed once said the majority of kindergarteners coming to his district had never been read to a day in their lives. How does that happen?
At any rate, enjoy the answers of many other fine people besides myself here, and feel free to share in the comments: Did they read you books as a child? Did you devour books the way I did? What was your favorite book as a kid?
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craigjead George.
Oh, I loved that book! I won a signed copy in an essay contest. I think that book made me into a backpacker. 🙂