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Friday fluff: For the love of books

When I was a kid, I was a voracious reader. I don't just mean that I read a lot of books but once I started reading a book, I hated to put it down until I had read the last page. When my mom would tell me to set the table for dinner, I'd say, "One more chapter" and then keep reading until she literally took the book out of my hands. I still remember reading Gone with the Wind in one weekend, most of it spent spread out on the living room floor, stopping only when my mom insisted I join the family to eat.

This habit wasn't always so good for my sleeping patterns (there were way too many nights I stayed up til 3 in the morning to finish a book!) but I do have many, many happy memories associated with books from my childhood and I firmly believe that my love of reading is one of the big reasons I always did so well in school. So it sort of broke my heart to read this post by Mark Anderson, a fifth-grade teacher in the Bronx who won a contest for $450 to spend on school supplies. I come from a family of teachers so I am well aware that the vast majority of K-12 teachers spend an insane amount of their own money on things for their classrooms, usually for items that they really shouldn't have to buy themselves but either their schools don't have the money or they have to fill out so many reams of paperwork to get any materials that it just seems easier to buy it themselves. In Mark's case, he ended up using the money for books, including some of my all-time favorites (well, really, does anyone NOT have E.B. White on their list of all-time favorites?). For some reason, it was seeing The Cricket in Times Square on the list that brought tears to my eyes. Although I don't think it's as well known as books like Stuart Little, I remember reading The Cricket in Times Square over and over - there is something about the story that just really touched me - and it makes me really sad to think about all the kids who have never even heard of it.

That post also made me start thinking about all the other books I loved as a kid but haven't thought about in years. Did anyone else love the Encyclopedia Brown books? I'm convinced that my logic/analytic skills developed early because of him. We also had almost the entire Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series (which I still can't believe my mother sold at a garage sale a few years ago!). Betsy-Tacy kept me company throughout grade school; then I believe it was junior high when I met Anne of Green Gables. My sister, our neighbor and I used to act out the poems in Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends and charged our parents 25 cents to watch the 'show'. Sigh. Makes me think that maybe I need to take a break from all these 'adult' things I read and get back to something simpler. I hear Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series is really good...

Happy weekend!
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