How To Become a Bookworm (Regan McMahon-ArkDem-Gaz)

No one encouraged me to be a bookworm; I just am one.

            I don’t recall bedtime stories or quiet time as a toddler. Competitive, inquisitive, with a sense of humor and a thirst for knowing more, I gravitated to books.

1.      Read aloud:  Thank you, Mrs. Willis, 4^th grade teacher at Fred Whiteside School. With her winning manner, she made books come alive. Mrs. Wilson, 5^th grade teacher. After lunch, she’d read to us. I believe it was she who read the magical story of The Secret Garden.  She also shared a book with the hilarious “Big Chief Sit-On-The-Fire-And-Put-It-Out.” Mrs. Akins, 6^th grade teacher – same school – also read to us and I looked forward to “after lunch” or “after recess” as a time for magic.

2.     Competition and other obsessive behaviors:  Thank you, Mrs. Yawn, I think.  A teacher had us cut short slips of construction paper and fold them into book shape.  We then wrote the title of the book on the paper and taped it beside our name in a “who can read the most books” contest.  Zoom!  I was out for the win.

3.     Bring your Library Book to Class Day:  Thank you, again, Mrs. Yawn.  While there may have been those fidgety students who never brought their books to class, I always had my library book, and I got to read, uninterrupted, for the Whole Hour.

4.     Latch on to a series:  I read every blue-fabric covered biography about famous women in the Camden Public Library.  They were on a shelf in the children’s area and I feasted on the lives of Jane Adams, Clara Barton, Amelia Earhart, and Dolly Madison. I still love biography.

5.     Genre of Choice:  History buff – “You Were There…at Pearl Harbor…on the Mayflower…during the San Francisco Earthquake…”  Historical fiction taught history and let me be a part of it through the first-hand account of children my age, about eleven or twelve years old. Now, I read Unbroken, cringing as I turn each page on my Kindle.

6.     Favorite Author:  When I turned into a teenage vampire, I devoured stories of the heart. I read everything by Janet Daily…I even wanted to change my name to “Margie” or “Marge” because of one of her female characters.  I cried when one of her main characters’ love-interest was killed in the Korean War.

7.     Humor: Frying an egg on the sidewalk was part of an escapade of the children in a book I read one summer.  Living across the street from the Camden Public Library gave me open access to a vast collection of books that kept me laughing.

8.     Classics: My first encounter with Scarlett and Rhett was when Mother gave me her copy (which was also her mother’s copy) of Gone With the Wind.  Sixth Grade. I’ve never recovered.

9.     Book Club: My first was The Gulf Shores Literary Society.  We were a group of like-minded young adults who carried shelves of trashy novels to the beach and swapped them to scandalize each other.  New friends believed I belonged to a legitimate literary group…they learned better. Later my book clubs read fantastic books such as The Red Tent and Loving Frank.

My taste in books and authors has not changed all that much. I love to read Dave Barry’s hilarious stories.  Historical fiction (also known as “lust in the dust”) once carried me through vacant periods of time.  Non-fiction is still a favorite, learning more than I ever wanted to know about presidents, first ladies, cotton fields, hurricanes, war, and The Great Flood of 1927.  I can spot a “formula” book and have been quite disappointed in John Grisham, Danielle Steel, and Fern Michaels for falling prey to such assembly-line writing.  I have enjoyed Nevada Barr’s books because they are set in our National Parks. Anna Pidgeon, park ranger, always wins the day, but there’s a map in each book and I learn about the park itself while following her adventures.

A bookworm – nobody had to convince me.  I was born to read…and to write.