As the story goes (and I’ve heard it a million times), my parents and I were driving down the road in our shamrock green AMC Gremlin on the way to my grandparents’ house. This was the early seventies-there were no car seat regulations, so I was just roaming around the backseat. I had just turned two. My parents, comfortable in the front seat amidst the fog of cigarette smoke (again, it was the seventies), were chatting and paying me little mind as I stared out the massive back window. Suddenly, my mother heard me say something from the backseat-she turned around and watched as I began to announce the names of the places we had just driven past. Places that I’d never been before, so she knew I wasn’t just identifying them based on familiarity. This continued for a few minutes more, until I lost interest and turned my attention elsewhere. Try as she might, she couldn’t get me to do it again that day-an early harbinger of the stubbornness that has become one of my greatest character flaws.

After that episode in the car, my parents couldn’t get me to stop reading. While I wasn’t able to understand a great many of the words I read, I would read the newspaper to anyone who would listen. It wasn’t just the newspaper and books however-I would read any word I saw. The back of a shampoo bottle, the label on a jar of spaghetti sauce-if it had words, I read them. Aloud. Quite frankly, it sounds more like a giant annoyance than some magnificent feat-I might not have been as patient and encouraging as my parents were.

My love of reading continued throughout my childhood. I was never without a book. I volunteered in the school library. I wrote the library column for the school newspaper. My parents trusted my judgment, and allowed me to choose what I read. One day, this blind confidence in my reading choices led to a phone call from the school office-I was nearly suspended from the fifth grade for bringing William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist to school with me to read during lunch. It was what I was reading at home-pulled directly from my parents’ shelves. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have taken it to my Catholic elementary school.

I read all the books a young girl is expected to read, and loved them all: Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie, the Nancy Drew series, and, of course, every book by Judy Blume. I was mostly interested in fiction, although I would read the occasional nonfiction book if I had a particular interest in the subject. A few of the books I read in my elementary school years made a great impression on me, among them Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, and The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (memorable to me because S.E. Hinton was sixteen when she wrote it-remarkable).

As I matured, my reading interests did as well. I began to read more salacious novels, works by V.C. Andrews and Jackie Collins. I also began to read the ‘classics’: Little Women, The Scarlet Letter, and Pride and Prejudice were a few of my favorites- the idea of cavorting with boys suddenly didn’t seem so bad. It was during this time that I discovered the book that will, for me, forever embody the perfect novel- Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. It changed the way I looked at the world and those who live in it. It is the benchmark of American fiction-all other works fall short. I have given it as a gift to several people who have made an impact on my life. My signed copy is my prized possession.

Right around my junior year of high school, I began to read horror novels. I had a crush on a boy who read them, so I started to read them so I could have something to talk to him about. I devoured everything by Dean Koontz, Robert McCammon, and Stephen King (as an adult, I have developed a real appreciation for Stephen King-I still await every new release like a child on Christmas Eve). My love of a good scare has not changed-I do so love a book that keeps me mindful of every noise in the dark.

During my teenage years, the time I spent reading never waned. As I have always done, I would set aside at least an hour a day for reading, but often I would spend entire weekends lost in another world. As you can imagine, I was often tormented at school because I always had my face in a book. The bullying was bad, but thankfully I had an escape hatch right in my hands. This derision at the hands of my classmates leads me to believe that very few of my peers (at least not the ‘cool’ ones) were spending as much time reading as I was-they had no idea what they were missing. As an aside, it is often sweet justice to reconnect with those same people via Facebook, only to see that a lot of them seem to be paying the price for their early lack of effort.

I’ve never been much of a magazine or newspaper reader. I make it a point to stay informed, but I do so via television news and the Internet. As a teenager, I did have a subscription to Cosmopolitan for a few years, but that was a gift from my well-meaning (but totally off-the-mark) grandparents. It wasn’t until many years later that I started to pay attention to the world of fashion-it seemed unimportant and trivial to me as a teenager (it’s a bit trivial even now, to be honest).

When I graduated high school and moved on to college, I decided to become a teacher. I had always enjoyed school (despite the teasing), and I knew that I would be an enthusiastic educator. After several years, circumstances brought me to a place where I could return to school and pursue my real passion-librarianship. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to do what I really love. I know that my love of the printed word can only benefit the students that visit my library. My recommendations are not only informed, but also earnest. I so love having a student come to me and thank me for a particularly astute book suggestion.

Those of us who truly love reading share a secret. One of my favorite authors, the aforementioned Stephen King, has said this: “Books are uniquely portable magic”. Avid readers have in common the knowledge that a book is indeed a magical talisman, capable of great influence and tremendous transformation.