National Day on Reading

Thankfully, the NCTE’s National Day on Writing lasts a full 24 hours. Over at A Year of Reading, Mary Lee shares a collection of video clips from KidLitCon09, with each of us talking about our lifetime of reading.

I’d also encourage you to check out the Kidlitosphere’s Gallery, “A Lifetime of Reading” that Mary Lee and co-blogger Franki Sibberson created. Twenty-one individuals contributed wonderful stories about their reading lives. “Ms. Pac-Man of Poetry” by Alissa Grise opens the gallery, and oh, what a stunning start!

I have my mother to thank. Every chance she had, she read to me, poems mostly, instilling the importance of literature in my young mind. My love for learning and reading stems from her influence; I can finally see that now. Every word my mother read to me I gobbled up, like a player in Ms. Pacman, one dot after the other, word after word, stanza after stanza, book after book. I loved books. I wanted anything and everything read to me, and I never minded if it was repeated more than once; I even preferred hearing a story or a poem a second or third time, just so I could store it in my mental anthology. I was addicted…to dots.

Wow! The power of words! Thank you Mary Lee and Franki for creating this portal for us.  And thank you Alissa for the inspiration.