Read Across America Day

March 2 is the National Education Association's Read Across America Day!

I love reading.  (Yeah, this is going to be a fairly wholesome post. But I don't think anyone come to Miles and Laurel for torrid scandals, do they?)

My parents instilled this love at an early age, and I am eternally, exceptionally grateful to them for that. We closed every day with a book (or several) at bedtime. We liked Little Critter and the Very Hungry Caterpillar and Clifford and all of those gems. As I got older, I became a voracious little reader on my own, but my parents were still part of the process. I remember a fantastic stretch of late elementary school when my dad read chapters of Animal Farm and 1984 to me before bedtime. My mom and I squabbled when she would go to the library on her own and come back with serious young adult fiction for me instead of the Sweet Valley High for which I begged.  It was (and is) tremendous fun for me to get pulled into a book completely, to stay up past bedtime and then wake up early to keep plowing through a story.

Then I went to college, and my friends and I read material for classes until our eyes practically fell out. For a year or three after I graduated, I very slowly reintroduced myself to the idea of reading strictly for fun. (this is when my love for magazine subscriptions came into play.) 

Around that time, I spent time reading with a fifth-grader at a local elementary school once a week. She had immigrated from East Africa and was making incredible strides in language and reading - the way young kids can do - but needed just a little extra help. 

I really wanted her to feel that lightbulb moment of how captivating and fun reading can be. Once that happens, it makes reading of all kinds so much easier and so much less of a chore. I thought back to my own childhood, when I was practically despondent after finishing the final book in the Little House series, so my reading buddy and I tried reading Little House in the Big Woods. 

Let me tell you: this was a huge flop. For a kid growing up in an urban area today, especially one who spent half of her life outside the United States, this book may as well have been in Mandarin. The old vocabulary was so strange that even I had a hard time explaining some of the references and terms.  To say she was not captivated is the understatement of the century.  We quit!  (Sorry, Laura. I still love you and your family.)

Then we regrouped and tried the American Girl books - specifically Kit, the girl who grew up during the Great Depression. (Kit is part of the newer group, so I wasn't familiar with her saga. I grew up with the original ones: Molly, Samantha, Felicity, and Kirsten.) Kit was the golden ticket for my reading buddy. We started reading those books each week and talking about the stories and the era. One day she referenced something that didn't happen until later in the book, and I stopped and asked her what she was talking about. It turned out that she had found the book during free time in class and read ahead on her own. I tried to play it cool but obviously nearly burst into tears I was so excited.

To be clear: I emphatically don't mean to take any credit in this little triumph. The point is that you can't force someone into becoming a reader - each kid has to find it on her own and do it herself. My reading buddy moved away the next year, and I don't know whether she continued growing into an avid reader. But that moment - the lightbulb moment - is so darn exciting.  It inspired and reenergized my own interest in the power of a good story.

And so today I'm celebrating books.  Are you a reader, Reader?  (Besides M&L!  Ha!)  If so, do you remember your own lightbulb moments about reading?  And what were your favorites growing up?