Monday, April 15, 2013

What Was the First Book that Made You Love Books?

 PW Staff Picks -

PWStaff -- April 11th, 2013
   

Every now and then, PWxyz likes to let the staff around here talk about books, because that’s all we secretly want to do. Previously, the PW staff has Fixed the Modern Library 100 Novels List, named some favorite short stories, and picked the best books read in 2011 and 2012. Here, we asked: What’s the first book you read that really made you love books? Let us know yours in the comments!
Andrew Albanese, senior writer: The Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald

The Great BrainEasy…
For me, it was The Great Brain series, by John Dennis Fitzgerald. In the mid-1970s, while I was in elementary school, my family began spending winters at my grandparents home on Oneida Lake, in upstate New York, so we could care for my great grandmother while my grandparents wintered in Florida. The move meant a special, 45-minute bus ride to school every day, with kids I didn’t know and who apparently were predisposed to not liking new kids. Or, maybe they just didn’t like me. So, there I was. 10 years old, in a rural lake house, in winter, no smartphones or Internet, of course, and only three blurry channels on TV, when the signal could penetrate the lake effect snow. But whatever, I never watched TV, I had to go to bed early every night so I could wake up at the crack of dawn to catch that snakepit of a bus to school. And then one day, our school librarian took pity on my brother and me, and sent us home with The Great Brain books. I have to admit, I can’t remember many details of the books today—but I’ll never forget my brother and I staying up late into the night reading the books together with a flashlight.


Jessamine Chan, reviews editor: The Ramona Quimby series by Beverly Cleary
quimby
Many childhood books (James and the Giant Peach, The Phantom Tollbooth, the Berenstain Bears series) inspired book love and reading love, but Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby series inspired devotion. I read James and the Giant Peach in first grade, which turned out to be a great way to extend my book report deadline by a month or two, so I’d guess that I read the Ramona Quimby books in early elementary school. I wasn’t a messy little girl with brambles in her hair, my dad definitely had a job, and I was the older rather than the younger sister. And I’m Chinese. Not so many Asian-American girl heroines in children’s books in the mid-80’s. In reality, I probably was Beezus, but no one wants to be Beezus. I wanted to be mischievous Ramona, always in trouble, always coming home with skinned knees. How do I know? I was flipping through my childhood journals a few years ago and in my Ramona journal, there is very clearly written in careful, wobbly child handwriting: “I AM RAMONA QUIMBY.” Dare to dream.

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