Reading didn’t come naturally to me. When I look at my nieces and nephews with their noses in a book since the moment they could read (some even before then) I regret that I wasn’t more like that as a kid. When I discussed this with one of my sisters recently, she observed that reading seems more popular for kids and teens today than it ever did when we were kids and teens ourselves. It’s hard to objectively comment on that idea since I clearly wasn’t in a circle that read often, so I decided to do a little research on the topic. I have discovered that reading was on a decline among children and teens throughout the 80s and 90s, which sort of makes sense when I think back to all of the reading programs in school and the amazingness that was Reading Rainbow (created in 1983). It wasn’t until a certain wizard appeared on the scene in the late 90s that this trend started to move in a positive direction making reading more prevalent again. It’s pretty amazing to think the impact a book or a series of books can have on the world. This has had me thinking about books that have changed my own reading trends and trajectory. What are those books that made me turn a corner, or summit a mountain on my reading journey and shaped me into the reader I am today? Continue reading
