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Early Childhood: First Moments with Books

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Early Childhood: First Moments with Books

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As an infant, I was introduced to the world of books. My parents read my siblings and I simple board books like Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and a collection of Fairy Tales from a book that I still have to this day. Growing up, we had a very large collection of children's books that my siblings and I shared. Reflecting on my early years, I relied on getting read books to go to sleep. Some other books we read during this time were Dr. Seuss's books and some Golden books!

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Preschool Years: Picture Books & Bedtime Stories

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Preschool Years: Picture Books & Bedtime Stories

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In my early toddler years, I quickly developed a love for story time with bright picture books like Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle and my personal favorite, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff. These laid the foundation for my lifelong love of reading. During this time in my life, we still read a lot of bedtime stories every single night and eventually got to a point where I started to help read these stories as well. I still have a lot of the books that we had from this time in my life that I know read to my own children. We continued to read a lot of Dr. Seuss and Golden books during this time period of my life!

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Elementary School Years: Starting to Read on My Own 

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Elementary School Years: Starting to Read on My Own 

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When I began kindergarten, I fell in love with the library. Going to the library quickly became my favorite part of school. To this day, I can still remember checking out a kitten book that had a cat that looked just like my cat at home and I was beyond excited. My first year of school, I liked reading books about kittens and Barbie. I can also still remember using a giant pencil to fill out the card with my name on it that was placed inside a sleeve in each book. I love writing my name on those cards because it meant I got a new book to explore! In 1st grade, I started reading independently and even taught my little sisters how to read. By the middle of my 1st grade year, I started reading Junie B. Jones books by Barbara Parks pretty religiously. I made it a personal goal to read as many of them as I could throughout my elementary years. I eventually moved on to other series like the Magic Tree House books by Mary Pope Osborne and The Babysitter Club series by Ann M. Martin. This was an exciting time for me because I fell in love with reading and picking out what I got to read on my own.

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Middle School Years: My Chapter Book Era 

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Middle School Years: My Chapter Book Era 

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Once I got into middle school, I started reading chapter books. I had always been a Harry Potter fan but in middle school I finally got to a point where I could read the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling for the first time. It was an experience I wish I could relive! After this series, my passion of reading continued to grow as I was finally at an age where I could read and understand just about any book that I could get my hands on. During this stage, some of my favorites were the Harry Potter series, Holes by Louis Sachar, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Peterson, The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell, Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt and anything by else by Lois Lowry. I also fell in love with the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder in early middle which is what encouraged me to become a teacher! This series had a huge impact on my life! During this point in my life, I was going through a lot at home as my parents got divorced, I moved a lot and my family was going through a really tough time- reading literally saved me during this point in my life and was my escape from reality. I am so glad I had books to lean on during this period of my life.

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Junior High Years: My Love of Popular Series

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Junior High Years: My Love of Popular Series

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During my Junior High years, I was a library aide which gave me a lot of time to focus on reading. I was in junior high at a time where reading popular books was a big deal. I remember reading all of the Twilight Saga books by Stephanie Meyers and even going to the midnight movie premieres! I will never forget, my best friend gave me a pillowcase with Edward Cullen on it for my birthday (: Some other books I really enjoyed during this time was the Clique series by Lisi Harrison , The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, The Maze Runner series by James Dashner. My favorite book that I read during Junior High was The Host by Stephanie Meyers. I also fell in love with the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld which actually become a movie last year. I reread this series last year and did a school wide book talk over it so that students would read the series as well! What I really loved about this time was that a lot of popular book series got turned into movies!

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Once I got to high school, I was introduced to classic and contemporary literature in my AP English courses. My reading taste was more centered around required readings for school. During this time, I studied novels like To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. One of my favorite books I studied during this time was The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I also really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. In high school, I even found a love for poetry by reading some Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Frost. During this time period, literature really opened up my eyes and showed me how cruel the world had been and could be. Most of the things during this time I read were not happy stories but they were all powerful and helped me begin to formulate my own adult ideologies.

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When I graduated high school, I attended community college for two years and then moved to Fayetteville to attend the University of Arkansas. Starting college, I stopped having time to read for fun and transitioned to reading more academic texts. As a Family and Consumer Science major, I read a lot of texts relating to Child Development, Fashion Trends, Nutrition and lots of cook books. Also during this time, I discovered The Dickson Street Bookstore in Fayetteville where I spent hours scouring the shelves for books relating to my studies. I never had a lot of money in college and found a love of thrifting so I began acquiring my own set of books alongside my childhood books and begin a little library of my own in my first apartment. During this time period, I didn't really read for fun aside from a few romance novels here and there. I discovered my love of the author Nicholas Sparks during this time and checked out his books from my local Public Library when I had some downtime. My favorite Nicholas Sparks I read during this time were The Notebook, Dear John, and Safe Haven.

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Life After College: Rediscovering Reading for Fun

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Life After College: Rediscovering Reading for Fun

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After college graduation, I began my teaching career but had more free time at home than I had ever had before. For the first time in my life, I didn't have homework so I was able to rediscover reading for fun. Throughout this time in my life, I have read hundreds of books and set yearly goals for myself. I am a big romance, historical fiction and fantasy reader. Growing up, I only read physical books but this past year, I bought a Kindle and it has helped me read more due to convivence. It has been a game changer for me! I am super into "Booktok" and it has helped me increase my TBR list. I am a big Facebook Market person and so I have had a great time finding books to buy and reselling books I buy. Some of favorite authors to date are: Taylor Jenkins Reid, Rebecca Yarros, Abby Jimenez, Kristen Hannah, Sarah J. Maas, Colleen Hoover and many more. I have entered my "spicy" booktok/momtok era and I am absolutely loving it. I have made a lot of friends through books these last couple of years. I feel like I am the happiest I have ever been throughout my life and a big contribution to that is my renewed passion for reading.

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Modeling My Love for Reading: As a Parent

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Modeling My Love for Reading: As a Parent

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As a mom of three kiddos, it is important that I spread of my love of reading to my children. I want my children to enjoy reading and discovering other worlds through books at their finger tips. Every night, we read multiple books and I love it. My 9 year old son Liam has started reading our books at night and I can't wait until my daughters can do the same. My kiddos have a variety of books they love but their favorites are the Llama Llama books by Anna Dewdney and the big Disney bedtime story books. My kids also see me reading and know I have a passion for it. My daughters love to bring me my books to read. We recently set up a "library" in the entryway to our house with hundreds of kids books and books of my own. I love that it is the first thing you see when you enter our home. I hope that my love of reading trickles down to my own kiddos and becomes a passion of theirs some day as well.

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Modeling My Love for Reading: As a Teacher

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Modeling My Love for Reading: As a Teacher

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As a middle school teacher, I am always sharing my passion of reading with my students. I am fortunate to work at a school that has a designated and required 15 minute SSR (silent, sustained reading) block every single day. At the same time every day, every single person in the entire school, students, teachers and staff are all reading for 15 minutes. My students that I have during this time know that SSR is my favorite time of day. I try to share book recommendations with students and even help do some book talks for our school show. Recently, a group of girls and I have been having daily conversations about the book turned series, "The Summer I Turned Pretty" by Jenny Hahn because the show is coming to an end. I try to go out of my way to read popular middle school level books that I can share with my students and encourage them to read as well.

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Reflection: Looking Back on a Reading Life

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Reflection: Looking Back on a Reading Life

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As I reflect on her 30 years of reading, I realize how books have shaped my imagination, critical thinking, and empathy for others. I look forward to my ongoing journey as an avid reader and I can't wait to share my love of reading with my future students in my future library!