A Passion

When thinking about ways to spend the summer, one of the first things to pop into my head is to read more.  I love reading, but have a tendency to get lazy during the school year.  It's so nice to have the extra time and energy during the summer to catch up on the books I've been wanting to read.  The book on the top of my list this summer is The Golden Compass.  This is a hard book to find in public libraries in Utah, probably because of the author's atheistic viewpoints...a discussion for another day.  But in my quest to acquire this book, I got to thinking about how much I love reading children's literature and how I would like to work on whittling down my list of kid-lit books I've been wanting to read.  And then I started thinking about something else.

A couple of months ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about what kind of business we would start if we had the business know-how and finances to make it a reality. I think this is a very important question for people to ask themselves because it can be very revealing of their passions in life. We were at Barnes and Noble at the time, hunting down a book we had read in 6th grade, The Cay. We had been talking about how that book had really resonated with us at the time. That was when we decided that, if we had all the necessary ducks in a row, we would open a children's book store. This book store might also feature a cafe that served things like cupcakes and hot cocoa. And naturally we'd be tight with J.K. Rowling and she would do readings of Harry Potter, like, all the time. Teen lit would have no place in our bookstore, as it is usually mind-numbingly lame. (I didn't even like it when I was a teen. I spent my teen years reading Star Wars novels in between required reading for school.  True story, Andy.)


It sounds silly, but children's literature is sort of a passion of mine.  I didn't know it until I read the Chronicles of Narnia, but kid-lit can be really smart.  In fact, some of these books probably offer more to adult readers, who can identify underlying themes, allegories, and plot devices, than they do to kids.  (If I had a nickle for every time Amy and I discussed the themes of racism and censorship in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix...).  Plus, I'm a real sucker for happy endings and the triumph of good over evil.  Sometimes grown up books end in a really depressing or unsettling manner that I don't always need in my life.

I guess I kind of have the perfect job for a person who loves reading kid books so much.  I spend about 10 minutes a day reading aloud to students from children's books that I love.  It's fun to find how timeless some books are.  For example, both years I've taught I have read The BFG and Because of Winn Dixie.  Both years my classes have loved them.  I also use my class as a barometer for new books that I haven't read yet.  After I've read a new book to my class, I know whether or not I'll read it to future classes.  I realized The Magic Tree House was a winner when my whole class started checking those books out from the library after I read the first one to them.

As usual, I don't have a very sophisticated way for closing this blog entry.  Maybe my loyal readers (all three of you) wouldn't mind sharing their favorite kid-lit book.  I wouldn't mind adding a few books to my list!