Reading

Everything in this picture is perfect. Including "Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes."

Even with all of our distractions, reading was cool in the 1990s.

Ok, maybe cool is a stretch, but I recall reading as a major source of entertainment as a child, something I have sadly lost touch with. And something 7-year-old me would probably be judging 24-year-old me for today.

As an adult, I have a profound love for comic books. It was something that didn’t start until the later years of the 1990s, and didn’t become a die-hard obsession until I was well into high school/college. Up until then, my reading was relegated to the most accomplished of children’s reading -- chapter books.

I, like most kids, started out reading the classics: Dr. Suess’s wild collection of works, Richard Scarry’s Busy Town, Mercer Mayer’s Little Critter and Stan and Jan’s Berenstain Bears. But eventually I outgrew these titles and graduated to chapter books, a landmark worth celebrating if only by telling everyone around you that you’re reading chapter books. And everyone at that age makes the announcement.

Growing up in the 90s there were a number of choices as far as chapter books were concerned. In the classic category there were the books of Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume, but I fondly recall the genre books of the time, especially horror and science fiction. In the former category R.L. Stein’s Goosebumps was the standard fare and Bruce Clovell’s tales of aliens taking over for one’s teacher or baby-sitter topped the list. I also became a fan of fantasy books as a grew older, mostly in the form of the Chronicles of Narnia (during which time we only had the crazy hilarious made-for-British-TV movies). This was before J.K. Rowling had introduced Harry Potter and J.R.R. Tolkein’s Middle Earth epic was neither a film series nor accessible to young readers.

Books also were readily available at that age. Not only did we have a huge collection of books at home because my mom was a teacher, but the school constantly was getting us to read, whether through regular visits to the library (my choices were typically the same Star Wars picture books or a hardcover book collecting a few random issues of Spider-Man), or through the many book sales and drives. I’m sure many of these books I just had to have are since lost and/or were of poor quality, but there is a certain 7-year-old version of me who loved them and couldn’t wait for the next.

But as time went on, and as is all things here on this blog, my tastes changed with it. Sometime in the 5th or 6th grade I became somewhat disenfranchised with the teacher’s choices in literature, and when I had begun taking German during everyone else’s reading class, I lost all interest in any of the books my classmates were assigned. Instead my interest moved completely onto comic books and there were regular visits to the two shops in town that carried them. Luckily I continue reading comics to this day, but my reading of novels has taken a turn nosedive.

I also had a strange change in my reading past during high school. My sophomore year of high school I took a job putting away books at the public library in the children’s section. It was a good job, but more than anything, it gave me access to kids' books again. At first it was an easy task to put my mind away from the collection, but after shelving the same books over and over again, you get rather curious. And that was the case for me. During high school I pretended to become an minor expert on children’s literature by seeing the books that regularly were returned the shelves and others that just piqued my interest. I also began to take a strong interest into the Newbery and Caldecott award winning books, and during those 3 years I worked at the library I read many of them. It also allowed me to pick up some new children’s books I had not heard of, like Frindle by Andrew Clemments which is marvelous, and rediscover some favorite authors like Louis Sachar (Holes, Sideways Stories from Wayside School).

After (and during) college most of my reading has been comics, and thankfully I have found enough variety so that they all do not involve crime-fighters wearing capes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t read. I have been working to make novels part of my regular activities, and usually I can finish about 4 in a year, although my reading tends to be sporadic and there are months where I won’t pick up a “regular” book. It’s not something I’m proud of, and 7-year-old me would probably be ashamed to know that I don’t regular check out chapter books.
So, to 7-year-old me, I apologize for not making reading a priority as you once did. Hopefully one day I will get to a place where I am reading every night, even if I have to wait until it's a picture book to my future kids.