Anthology
Anthology
—Dick Robinson
Chairman, Scholastic
Scholastic Inc.
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The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for
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ISBN 978-1-338-68170-3
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by David Levithan
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And without further ado she slid Jinxes for the Jinxed from its shelf,
sank onto the nearest cushion, and began to read.
from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
by K.A. Applegate
If you can read this sentence, congrats. You are in possession of the most
amazing superpower on the planet.
Nothing as mundane as something you’d find in the MCU or the DC
Universe. None of that invisibility or telekinesis stuff. No turning into
animals after you acquire their DNA.
Nope. This is way better.
Reading gives you the power to understand.
To understand others. Your family. Your friends. Your dog.
To understand yourself. Your moods. Your fears. Your hopes.
To understand the world. The present. The past. And most impor-
tantly, the future.
Maybe you’re thinking, Meh. I’d rather be able to morph into, say, a
red-tailed hawk. (And yeah, that would be pretty cool.)
But here’s the thing. When you understand the world, you can change
the world. And in case you haven’t noticed, the world could really use
some changing.
Superpowers evolve in strange ways. Maybe you’re bitten by a radio-
active spider. Maybe you travel to Earth from another planet. Maybe you
touch a glowing blue cube.
Or maybe you simply open a book and begin to read.
How does your reading superpower work? Well, as you read, you
become part of the story. You imagine. You empathize. You participate.
Participation. That’s what separates reading a book from all other
forms of entertainment. Movies and TV show you. Books need you.
Movies and TV show you the action, the setting, the characters. There
it all is, right in front of you on the screen. Filmmakers lay it out for you,
like a meal in a restaurant, all cooked and plated and garnished.
Books don’t do that. The difference between a book and a screenplay
by Avi
by David Baldacci
I was born and grew up in Richmond, Virginia, a place that was largely
segregated along racial lines at the time. The Brown v. Board of Education
decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal was
inherently unequal and that schools must be integrated with all due
speed, came down in 1954. Virginia was the first southern state to abide
by this urgent edict. I was part of the first class to be integrated. It was
1972. The “speed of a glacier” analogy would have done a disservice . . .
to glaciers.
Simply because the separation of the races was no longer legal didn’t
mean that people’s views changed. For much of my youth, many of the
folks I knew would find any notion of true equality absurd. And any
thought of this ever changing, despite the ruling from the Supreme Court,
was considered even more outrageous. It was the way it was because
it was always the way it was, a civil war and a civil rights movement
notwithstanding.
As a college student, I would pass down Monument Avenue,
Richmond’s most prestigious broadway, and see each day the enormous
statues of Confederate generals and political leaders erected there, glori-
fying those who fought to maintain slavery. Later came a long battle and
angry protests when there was a movement to add another statue to
Monument Avenue, that of native-born Richmonder and world-renowned
African American activist Arthur Ashe. At that point we were very near
the start of the twenty-first century, with incredibly heinous prejudices
lingering still.
Those tenacious and insidious beliefs could have been mine as well.
But my way out of this closed loop of thinking and living was reading
books, specifically at the public library where my parents took me, my
brother, and my sister every weekend. I checked out far more tomes than
by Blue Balliett
Holding a book you can’t forget—one that delights and haunts you—can
equal holding power. This I know to be true!
As a kid, I was shy but deeply curious. Questions and big ideas chased
each other around my mind. Sometimes I think the person I was when I
first fell in love with books is exactly who I still am: an escapist Wonderer
with a What-If view of things. Reading stories reassured me that the
world was a big place, with many ways of seeing and doing—and plenty
of Unrecognized Thinkers like me.
I believe with all my heart that reading the right book at the right
time—at any age—can lead to finding a path in the real world. For me,
this goes back to Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon,
which I first experienced at four years old. Thick crayon in hand, Harold
creates an exciting world that he then explores. When his purple lines
begin to take over, he draws himself back out and returns home to his
own bed.
What Harold did is what every writer does, but I didn’t realize this for
years.
As a kid, someone most definitely without power, I climbed into book
after book. When E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs.
Basil E. Frankweiler came out, I was twelve years old. Growing up in
New York City and knowing that the Metropolitan Museum of Art was a
real place, I couldn’t get over the thrill of this story. For years after read-
ing that novel, I imagined myself as a cooler, braver Blue within my
familiar world, a person tackling puzzles involving great art. Someone
who could get things done! Filled with hope and an ambition to fix what
seemed wrong, I felt certain that books proved this could happen.
Decades later, I began writing stories that I wanted in my home as a
parent and in my classroom, as a teacher—books about kids who tackle
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by Judy Blundell
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by Coe Booth
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by Ann E. Burg
The house was a grand old dwelling with a large, rolling lawn and great
armchair stoop with a sycamore tree out front. Three families lived in
it—our apartment was in the middle—two large bedrooms, a living
room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and sunroom. The sunroom with
its yellow walls and brown wicker chairs was my favorite, but it was the
dining room that had the small window overlooking my world—my
stoop, front sidewalk, and much-loved sycamore.
Brooklyn was the center of my universe. Everyone I loved lived inside
its leafy borders and I knew every crack in the pavement, every neighbor
who passed by on their way to and from work or school. On Sundays we’d
visit Grandma, and every two weeks, my mother, brother, and I boarded
the big green bus that would bring us to the library.
Why do you always bring home the same book? my brother asked
whenever I found Little Pear stuck in the stacks again. Why wouldn’t I?
Though he lived far away in a one-room house made of sunbaked bricks,
in a village surrounded by bean and cabbage fields, Little Pear was my
friend. I couldn’t just leave him squeezed on a library shelf, barely breath-
ing, unread and unloved.
When we moved to New Jersey, there were lots of trees—a whole
woods right in our backyard. But no favorite sycamore. No sunroom. No
stoop. No big green city bus. I could sit on the curb for hours with only
squirrels, birds, and bugs to keep me company.
And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be
where someone loved him best of all. Finally! Words to label the floaty
feeling I sometimes felt with my New Jersey friends.
Books help me understand the world. They build bridges to people and
places we might not otherwise know. “You never really understand a per-
son,” Atticus tells Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, “until you consider
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by Kacen Callendar
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by Sharon Cameron
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by Angela Cervantes
When I was a kid, I used to get in trouble for reading too much. It’s true.
I’d lug books everywhere I went, including to the dinner table. In between
bites of chicken enchiladas or forkfuls of spaghetti, I’d read. I’d read right
up until my mom would call out my full name: “Angela Christina
Cervantes! Put the book away now and eat dinner!” As my siblings gig-
gled, I’d stash the book away before my mom could warn me a second
time. A second warning was really a final warning. There would be no
third warning.
Only once did I ignore that first warning. I was reading E.B. White’s
Charlotte’s Web at the dinner table and thought I had time to read just a
little bit more before my mom put her foot down. It probably didn’t help
that my mom had served pork for dinner and I wasn’t planning on touch-
ing it—in honor of Wilbur, of course!
With the second warning, the book was snatched out of my hands. I
didn’t get the book back for a full two days. Pure torture!
At school visits, I tell kids about how I used to get into trouble for
reading too much. Most of the students and teachers nod in recognition
when I admit this fact.
“How many of you have ever gotten into trouble for reading too
much?” I ask.
Hundreds of hands fly up, eagerly wanting to tell me about the time a
favorite book got them into trouble. Once, a student said he was busted
reading Captain Underpants at church instead of listening to the sermon.
Another time, a kid said she stayed up reading my book Lety Out Loud
all night under her covers while the rest of her family slept. She woke up
dead tired the next day.
“Was it worth it?” I asked.
“Yes!”
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by Lucy Christopher
I found my love for reading in a hot, strange land when I was nine years
old. I was curled up in the back of a Holden station wagon with Elyne
Mitchell’s The Silver Brumby clutched tight. I was reading about Thowra,
a wild stallion who steals away domestic mare Golden, then shows her
his magnificent bush home in the Snowy Mountains. I knew if I kept my
head down reading, I wouldn’t have to talk to everyone else.
The everyone else was the Bolwell family we’d just bought a house
from, who were taking me camping. Strange, perhaps, to go away with
our house’s previous owners, but I’d been in Australia only a few months
and didn’t have any other friends. Claire was a year older than me and her
sister, Sarah, a year younger—instant besties, perhaps. But they were
everything I was not—they slathered Vegemite onto their crackers and
wiggled it through the holes, they swam like fish in their own pool, and their
dad took them camping. We didn’t own a pool, or a tent, or Vegemite. I
hadn’t had a dad for a while either; part of the reason for moving was
getting to know him.
On the drive, Mr. Bolwell joked about snakes, spiders, hot days and
freezing nights—all that awaited us camping. I picked up one of Claire’s
books, discarded in the footwell, and hid in its leaves. Land and time are
very long on Australian road trips; it’s possible it took the same amount
of hours to finish the book as to reach our destination. Mitchell’s The
Silver Brumby was a dream I sank into in sprawling Melbourne suburbs
and awoke from in a mountainous national park. Perhaps I blinked when
I did so, the forests and granite tors of Mitchell’s book conjured to
reality.
I devoured more of Mitchell’s series on future camping trips. Soon I
read them aloud to Claire and Sarah by flashlight to a background of
cicadas. I loved that nature in Mitchell’s books was not calm or typically
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A BOOK CAN TAKE YOU I’M GLAD YOU SAID THAT, ARNOLD!
TO A MEDIEVAL CASTLE THAT IS WHAT OUR CLASS
OR TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN IS DOING TODAY!
OR TO THE NORTH POLE. LET’S GO, KIDS!
AND YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO LEAVE HOME,
WHERE IT IS RELATIVELY SAFE.
JUST OPEN A BOOK
AND IT CAN TAKE YOU ANYWHERE.
I DIDN’T MEAN IT
LITERALLY!
by Suzanne Collins
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by Bruce Coville
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There are two reasons I’m so much in love with reading, one personal and
one professional.
Professionally, I love reading because every time I pick up a book, I
rediscover the fountain of youth; I’m thrown back in time and become a
student again. With each page I turn, decades fall away and I become
ten-year-old Christopher sitting in Mr. Alums’s English class awaiting
that day’s lesson.
Everything I read, from the finest literature to the slightest piece of
fluff, becomes a lesson. I’m instructed on ways to make my writing more
similar or less similar to what I’m reading.
I am so grateful to be living at this time because in spite of the many
downsides of technology, it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t that long ago
that books and the ability to read them were rare. Only the wealthiest
individuals had the time, education, and finances necessary to take
advantage of this marvelous skill. My ancestors were forbidden by law
from learning to read. But we’re living in an age where we have a relative
embarrassment of riches, where libraries have become the great equal-
izers, making books and authors available to all.
I can go to the library and get a book written by Toni Morrison or
Walter Dean Myers and love the book for the way it reads. But I also get
a free lesson from Ms. Morrison on how to move a scene around, and Mr.
Myers can teach me how to make a reader feel a certain way. When or
where else would I be able to do that? That’s one of the reasons I love
reading.
Personally, I love reading because I am a human being, and a large
part of being human is finding a great deal of comfort in belonging to a
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by Edwidge Danticat
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by Sayantani DasGupta
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by Lulu Delacre
Why love reading? ¿Porqué amar la lectura? When you love to read, you
hop from one book to another. From worlds of shapes, colors, and num-
bers to those of cars, planes, and trains. You dwell on drawings of
beautiful birds, incredible insects, magnificent mammals, and fabulous
fish. You cross roaring rivers and wander through woods. You climb
marvelous mountains and gaze back at footprints tattooed in a golden
sand dune. You go underwater without getting wet. You travel through
space without missing a breath. You visit with dinosaurs that lived long
ago and listen to creatures still to be born. You discover churches and
mosques, royal palaces and humble huts. And as the art in the book gives
way to thousands of words, you stumble on that special story, the story
with which you connect. When you love reading, you leaf through so
many pages that you end up realizing that you, too, have a story to tell.
I know for a fact that every reader is a writer at heart. I’ve read aloud
stories set in Spanish-speaking countries or within a Latinx home life.
I’ve gazed up from the page to look at the young audience in front of
me. I’ve seen that sparkle of understanding in the kids looking back. In
them I see you. I see when you click with a main character speaking
words in español. You connect to a short story that celebrates family
traditions like yours. And so it is that although you think you have noth-
ing to say, out of fear of making mistakes, you know you also have lived
like the story’s hero did. You’ve cried and laughed. You’ve feared and
conquered. You’ve failed and succeeded. You’ve imagined and dreamed.
You are the main character of your own life. And so you can weave your
past into fiction. It’s only a matter of learning my trick.
At schools nationwide I give children some tools. I say, “Think of your
favorite foods, for everyone eats. Think of a dish you can’t wait to taste
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by Chris D’Lacey
It may seem strange, but I barely read a thing when I was young. My
parents had no interest in books. We were not a reading household.
Occasionally, I would pick up a Marvel comic and lose myself in the
superhero world. But books were never on my horizon.
All this changed one afternoon when I was fourteen. I was sitting in
an English class, bored. My teacher, Mr. Sidney, was pacing the room,
reading to us from Shakespeare. Mr. Sidney was an elderly scholar. He
wore a brown flannel suit, dusted with chalk marks. While he droned
through Hamlet, I had my hands in my lap, fingers interlaced, thumbs
twirling like a small turbine. Mr. Sidney stopped by my chair. He said,
“Can’t you do anything, boy, but twiddle your thumbs like that?” I replied,
“Yes, sir; I can twiddle my thumbs like this.” And I turned the turbine in
the opposite direction.
As a result, I was sent to the library after school, to spend an hour
there contemplating my impertinence. A teacher called Mr. Whitely was
supervising detention that day. Mr. Whitely had a beard and drove a
Volkswagen Beetle. Mr. Whitely was . . . different. Normally, pupils in
detention were expected to knuckle down and get on with some course-
work. Mr. Whitely had other ideas. He would make you read for an hour.
You were not allowed to read the book of your choice, however; you had
to read the book of Mr. Whitely’s choice. The book he selected for me
had an image of two ladies in ball gowns on the cover. I laughed. I was four-
teen. I loved soccer and the Beatles. I couldn’t possibly read a book about
women in ball gowns. I pushed it away. Mr. Whitely pushed it back. He
tapped the cover. “Read,” he said, without saying anything at all.
One hour later, Mr. Whitely returned to tell me I could go home. I was
still reading. I was two pages from the end of a chapter. I asked Mr.
Whitely if I could stay another ten minutes. Mr. Whitely raised an
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by Jennifer Donnelly
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by Jenny Downham
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by Julie Falatko
When I talk to students about writing, I tell them that the process of being
a writer is the same for me as it is for them. I struggle to get my ideas to
be as great on the page as they are in my head. And then I revise. A lot.
All of that is true, but what I don’t say is: I still don’t get how it works.
I am a writer. That’s my actual job. But I don’t know how writing and
reading actually WORK. It’s a scientific mystery.
I think of a scene. I write it down. And somehow, by doing that, a
reader who is hundreds of miles away from me can see that scene I made
up in their own head.
I can write a joke in my house in Maine and make someone in Texas
laugh.
A book is flat letters on a page. The letters don’t move. They don’t
dance or sing. But reading a book can make me smile. How? Do those
marks on the pages transmit humor waves through the air into my brain
and activate my smile muscles? It’s probably that the ink in the letters
diffuses ambient hilarity molecules into my brain hemispheres. Or maybe
that the words pile into microscopic telepathic image transmission
ships that fly into my ears.
Definitely one of those.
It has to be, because how else can some paper sewn into a cardboard
cover make me smile if I’m reading out in public? That’s amazing!
I remember the first book that made me cry, Bridge to Terabithia by
Katherine Paterson. How dare this book make my cry? I couldn’t believe
it. But it did.
A book can let you literally read someone else’s mind, because authors
take things from their heads and write them down for you. All those
words in books are describing someone else’s thoughts. And if you read
a lot of books, you’re getting a lot of practice reading other people’s
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by Sharon G. Flake
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by Aimee Friedman
I still remember that day. I was in the fourth grade, waiting in line in the
school cafeteria, when I overheard two students raving about a book
series they loved called the Baby-sitters Club. It was about a group
of girls who ran their own baby-sitting business, and all the dramas
and victories that ensued. My ears perked up; I was a voracious reader, and
always searching for new books to consume.
That evening, with my mom’s blessing, I ordered the latest title in the
Baby-sitters Club series—#15: Little Miss Stonybrook . . . and Dawn—
off my Scholastic Book Club flyer. When the book arrived, with its bright
and appealing illustrated cover, I dove in right away. And I was hooked.
As soon as I finished, I ran to the library, and the bookstore, and any-
where I could get my hands on books 1–14. I caught up, and then waited
breathlessly for the next installment.
Most of the novels I had read before were period pieces, or fantasies,
or somber “classics” that my parents or teachers pressed on me. Nothing
quite hit me where I lived like the Baby-sitters Club. The author, Ann M.
Martin, wrote in a warm, familiar style that made the characters feel as
real as any kids I knew. Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, Mary Anne, and Dawn
talked and laughed and fought and dressed and dreamed just like my
friends and I did. They dealt with homework and crushes and family
strife. And I loved that they were, on balance, kind to each other. In my
own life, and in some of the contemporary fiction I had read, a fair
amount of cruelty between girls was somehow celebrated. What a gift it
was to see young women being supportive of each other, and working
their way through disagreements with empathy. There was conflict, to be
sure—any good story will have that—and never any sort of preachy mes-
saging (kids are allergic to such things). But ultimately the books
provided a safe, cozy haven where friendship and sisterhood won the day.
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by Cornelia Funke
We all, writers of stories, makers of books, know that not everyone likes
to read them. In fact, most people don’t—as so often books are forced on
children like some kind of medicine, and we all know how that tastes!
Read this and you’ll be a better person. Read this and you’ll develop
your writing skills. Read this and you’ll get better grades.
Those of us who are lucky enough to love books nevertheless know of
course that the medicine part should be ignored. No grown-up would
walk into a bookstore and say: Can you please suggest a book that makes
me a better person? Or educates me on some painful truths?
No.
We don’t love books because they’re good for us. (Although I do
believe they are.) We love them because they can taste like chocolate, like
foreign spices we never tasted before. We love them because they take us
through magical wardrobes and to foreign planets. We love them because
they open doors and windows when our world seems so small and gray.
And those that are really good make us see that world far more clearly, in
bright colors, all its mysteries and magic revealed.
Books make us into shape-shifters. They teach us to walk in some-
body else’s shoes and teach us how it feels to be hungry, happy, angry,
tired, so afraid that we can barely move, so sad that we drown in our own
tears . . . They teach us that it doesn’t matter what color our skin has,
whether we’re boys or girls. They give us words for what we feel—when
we believe that no one else feels that way! Books give us companions
who understand when nobody else does, printed friends who are like us,
when everyone seems so different.
Sometimes they even give us wings, the scales of a fish, the legs of a
spider, or they show us how it may feel to be a tree. They can make us
understand that life comes in many shapes on this planet and that we
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by Eric Gansworth
If you were born at the Tuscarora Indian Nation after 1900, you likely
wouldn’t have a loving relationship with books. I suspect this is true on
many reservations. Books were associated with school, which terribly
echoed the US government’s systematic attempt to erase indigenous cul-
tures: the Indian Boarding Schools. Many reservation households did not
own books. Mostly, I saw books on library shelves, lining the lunchroom
walls in our school.
In kindergarten, I enjoyed reading comics and monster magazines,
but knew I was missing jokes aimed at an older audience. I mastered
schoolbooks to improve my magazine comprehension skills. By third
grade, I was placed with the fourth grade for reading period, and our
assigned book was John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony. The novel, set on a
ranch, featured cowboys as major players. Though cowboys were scarce
in upstate New York, where my reservation exists, I knew what they
were. Tension between “cowboys and Indians” was a mainstay on TV, in
movies, cartoons. In those places, Indians represented danger for the
hero trailblazing cowboys. I wasn’t eager to read this book that might
paint me as a deterrent to “progress.”
The complex style immediately attracted me and I began reading
toward improving my skills. By the end of the second page, I’d glimpsed
the cowboy Billy Buck and his world as a live-in ranch hand. Though
connected intimately to his employers, the Tiflins, Billy actively dis-
played his employee status at all times. He was dressed, waiting, before
Mrs. Tiflin rang the breakfast bell, but couldn’t enter and join the meal
until family members were ready. Young readers were supposed to iden-
tify with Jody, the adolescent main character, but I was drawn to Billy
Buck’s familiar practiced subservient position. I knew how to behave like
him. My mother cleaned the houses of white people in the tony “village”
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by Lamar Giles
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by Alex Gino
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by Alan Gratz
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by Melissa Grey
There’s a phrase in Latin that literally means “go with me.” Vade mecum.
It refers to that one book you can’t live without. That one book that “goes
with you.” Growing up, that book for me was From the Mixed-Up Files
of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I carried my dingy, dog-eared copy with me
everywhere. Between its pages, I both lost and found myself.
You see, I had an unhappy childhood. My home never quite felt like
a safe space. So reading about children who made their own home in a
place as magical as the Metropolitan Museum of Art was inspirational to
me. I formed all these grand plans about doing what Claudia and Jamie
Kincaid did; I would save up all the loose change I could scrounge up in
my couch cushions and make my own life somewhere else. I even lived
in New York City! The Metropolitan Museum was right there!
But sadly, on a school trip to that very same museum, I found that the
Met, with its security guards and all-seeing cameras, wasn’t nearly as
receptive to overnight guests as E.L. Konigsburg would have me believe.
I would never pluck spare change out of the fountain to do my laundry
and buy vending machine dinners. I would never sleep in Napoleon III’s
bed. I learned that life could not always imitate art. I couldn’t escape my
life the way the Kincaid children had. But what the book did teach me
was that I could escape. It was just a different kind of escape, unlimited
by the constraints of reality.
Books were my escape.
And I wasn’t limited to just one. Every book was its own world, its
own universe. Each one had its own rules and brave heroes breaking
those rules. I could lose myself in Tolkien’s Middle-earth or Mercedes
Lackey’s Valdemar or J.K. Rowling’s Hogwarts. Fiction made all things
possible. And if those incredible authors could create such vivid and
wonderful worlds . . . then maybe I could too.
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by Virginia Hamilton
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by Karen Hesse
In 1961 I ran away from home. I was nine years old. I was certain my
parents didn’t love me, and I needed to figure out how to proceed with the
rest of my life. The place I ran to was my local library, a favorite destina-
tion for as long as I could remember. I loved my neighborhood library; I
felt safe there.
I’d never come on my own before. Usually my brother walked me
there.
Unaccompanied, in that big, light-filled building, I felt very small and
vulnerable, but also very grown-up and powerful.
My plan was to stay at the library for the rest of my life. There was a
bathroom where I could wash up. I didn’t eat much so I didn’t worry
about food. And there were books, enough books to last a lifetime.
When I didn’t show up for dinner that evening, my mother sent my
brother out looking for me.
It didn’t take him long to find me.
I rejoiced at seeing him when he first joined me at the round library
table.
But then he spoke.
“You are in big trouble,” he said.
“I don’t care,” I told him. “I’m never going home.”
My brother was sympathetic but firm.
I was stubborn but also a little scared.
The library was preparing to close for the day. The children’s librar-
ian, who I adored, had been monitoring my presence all afternoon and
was too wise to be fooled if I’d tried ducking into the bathroom to hide
until the doors were locked.
So I finally swallowed my pride and allowed my brother to lead me
out the big glass doors and back home.
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Powww!
O! Somewhere a place
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YES!
Just down the road!
20,000 Leagues
Deep in stories she dives
Out the LionWitchWardrobe
Into magical lives . . .
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Yet . . .
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Herself unabashedly
x Infinity
Larger-than-life-largessely
Pippi thumbs-up-decreed:
If I can be so =
So YOU can be
I too—like YOU!—could be
Hero of my story
Lift up others, me, you—in truth:
It’s my dharma, my duty!
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Born by you
Bounds to the world . . .
Transforms you—
And you: the universe!
We can imagine
Speak, hear, write
READ our dreams
Into being
On a bookshelf
Find our true selves
Happy ends
And beginnings
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by Deborah Hopkinson
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*From, in order: The Vesper Holly series by Lloyd Alexander, The Secret Garden by
Frances Hodgson Burnett, the Justice trilogy by Virginia Hamilton, the Lioness Quartet
by Tamora Pierce, Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones, The Hero and the Crown by Robin
McKinley, Winter of Fire by Sherryl Jordan, the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip
Pullman, A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle, Anne of Green Gables by L. M.
Montgomery, The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope, and Howl’s Moving Castle by
Diana Wynne Jones.
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by Varian Johnson
When I was growing up, it often seemed like the only time I truly saw
books about kids like me was in February—during Black History Month.
While I relished the opportunity to pick up these books, I wasn’t always
happy with the choices, because they all seemed to be about slavery.
About civil rights. About the struggle—the burden—of being black.
Don’t get me wrong—these books are important. They have a vital
place in our collections, and in our homes. Kids—and adults—need to
read them. These books tell the story of those who have come before us.
But kids of color deserve a wide variety of stories. Serious books and
historical books . . . but also funny books. Adventures. Mysteries. Stories
where the boy with the brown skin saves the day, or the girl with the hijab
solves the case.
That is why I am so excited about the state of publishing today. There
are so many more book choices than when I was a kid. Today, we not only
get to revisit our past in books, but we get to experience the present—and
even the future! To not just exist in the book, but to be the hero. The star.
And isn’t that one of the most joyful things about reading a book . . .
being able to see ourselves today, and being able to see the person we
hope to be?
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by Jess Keating
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by Christine Kendall
The Literacy Day people were right in their guess that music and snacks
would draw more folks to the book festival. I sat behind the two neat piles
of books at my table, inhaled the buttery smell of popcorn, and watched
a woman let herself go over at the DJ’s booth—all shoulders and swing-
ing hips. She pranced from one author’s table to the next, picking
up books and tucking them under her right arm so she was already loaded up
pretty good when she got to me. I wondered for a moment if she could
manage to browse through my book with her one free hand, but I’d
already seen how this woman moved. She had good balance.
“I’d like to write,” the woman said, flipping through my book, “but I
don’t have enough words.”
Now, that already sounded like a poem to me.
“You have all the words you need,” I said. “I know ’cause I saw you
dancing over there.”
That woman’s eyes lit up like somebody had just given her free tickets
to a dance-off.
“You think so?” she said.
“No doubt about it.” I dropped my hands to my sides and stood stock
still. “Something came over me.” I recited those simple words that make
up the opening sentence of a short story by Toni Cade Bambara. “You
have those words,” I said to the woman. “We all do.”
I ran my hand over the smooth cover of my book and thought about
what makes reading magical. It’s the words, for sure, but it’s not how
many words a writer has. It’s how we use words to get under the skin of
our characters and bring their stories to life. It’s empathy, the ability to
share the feelings of others or, put another way, to feel their music. That’s
what’s magical about reading and it’s why I write. It’s like dancing with
words.
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by Kody Keplinger
When I was nine years old, I brought home my first Harry Potter book. It
seemed so thick to me, with way too many pages in way too small font.
With my visual impairment, I’d have to read it with a magnifier, which
seemed like such an impossibly daunting task. Luckily, I’d brought it
home from the library that day because my mom had told me to, insisting
that she wanted to see what all the hype was about (the first movie would
be out soon) and that we could read it together.
Reading that book—and the next couple in the series—with my mom
is one of my fondest childhood memories. Not just because of the books,
though they became instant favorites, but because of the experience. I
loved sitting on the couch, listening to her read, pausing to comment or
gasp or share our intense emotions about a big moment in the story. But
it didn’t end with Harry Potter. We kept reading books together all the
way through middle school and high school, and even to this day, some-
times when my mom visits, we pick a book for her to read aloud to me.
Being read aloud to is no longer a necessity in my life. Audiobooks
and other accessible options have made reading solo much more feasible.
Instead, we do it because it’s fun. Because it’s a way to bond—to share
an experience that otherwise would be a solitary, isolated one.
My mom isn’t the only person I’ve bonded with through read-aloud
sessions, either. When I was in college, my roommate and I both shared
a passion for young adult novels. When she learned I hadn’t read a favor-
ite book of hers, I tentatively made a suggestion: “Maybe we could read
it together?” To my surprise and delight, she jumped at this. And from
then on, every single night, right before bed, we’d kick out any other
friends we had in our dorm room and read the next chapter or two of a
novel.
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by Barbara Kerley
I’ve always been a people watcher. To be honest, I’m a bit of a snoop. I’m
very interested in what other people are up to.
My husband and daughter think I ask way too many questions, but I
can’t help it. I find people fascinating. I want to know what they think is
important, and why.
As a kid, I loved listening to stories about people who did extraordi-
nary things—artists, scientists, explorers, and trailblazers of all kinds. I
wanted to know everything I could about their lives. How did they
achieve their goals? What did it feel like? Why did it matter to them
so much?
So it’s not surprising that one day I would write biographies.
When I start writing a new book, I spend months researching. I try to
find primary sources like letters, diaries, and eyewitness accounts. It’s a
great way to get to know the person I’m writing about. In primary
sources, I can find intimate details that bring them to life.
Take John Adams, for example. I knew a lot about him when I started
writing my book Those Rebels, John & Tom. I knew he joined the
Continental Congress in Philadelphia. And I knew he worked hard to con-
vince the other delegates to vote for independence.
But I didn’t know much about him as a person. So I read his diary. It
turns out, he was very excited about the food he ate in Philadelphia. He
especially loved desserts.
“A most sinful feast again! Everything which could delight the eye or
allure the taste. Curds and creams, jellies, sweetmeats of various sorts,
20 sorts of tarts, fools, trifles, floating islands and whipped syllabubs.”
Primary sources showed me that the champion of democracy had
a real sweet tooth. (And in case you are curious, a whipped syllabub is a
frothy mixture of sweetened whipped cream, lemon juice, and wine.)
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by Sabina Khan
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by Kazu Kibuishi
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by Bill Konigsberg
When I was young, I thought I was the only gay kid in the world.
This was the 1980s. Before the Internet. It was also before there were
a significant number of characters who were LGBTQIA+ on television or
in books.
I loved books, and I devoured them. I read all my sister’s Judy Blume
books, and I adored them, but still I didn’t really see myself in them. I
didn’t see any kids who were keeping my secret from their family, the
one that made me feel different and alone.
And that made me feel very alone.
That all changed one day when I found a bookstore in New York City,
where I lived, called the Oscar Wilde Bookshop. It was a bookstore
devoted to LGBTQIA+ readers. I’d never known such a place existed, but
here it was, a store with walls of books with people who were like me in
this one important way.
I was seventeen when I found that store, and I bought a lot of books. I
read one called Tales of the City, which was about a group of people in
San Francisco who all felt like misfits, like me. They were also all kind.
Some were gay, some were straight, some were bi, some were trans. It
was the first time I saw people who shared my heart, who had struggled
with feeling alone and sometimes felt sad, but also sometimes didn’t, and
who wanted to make the world a better place but sometimes messed up.
That book changed me forever. I’ve felt alone since, like all people do
sometimes, but I’ve never felt quite as alone as I did before.
And now I get to be on the other side. I write books about LGBTQIA+
youth, and I get to meet some of those young people, and it makes me
feel so happy when I see that same look in their eyes. That they are
finally able to read books where they see parts of themselves for maybe
the first time.
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by Gordon Korman
I’m crouched under a heavy library table with four Texas teachers and we
could all be dead in the blink of an eye.
According to the schedule, I should be in the cafeteria, presenting to
an audience of three hundred kids. But the National Weather Service
spotted a line of tornadoes, due west and heading our way. The three
hundred kids are sitting up against the library walls right now—and
walls throughout the school—in the duck-and-cover position.
You might remember these tornadoes. If you’ve ever seen the YouTube
clips of eighteen-ton semis being tossed violently around a parking lot by
a powerful twister, that’s what’s bearing down on us. Of course, we don’t
know that at the time. All we have is weather radar of the storm system
on one of the teacher’s phones. And we’re directly in its path.
To be honest, the teachers seem pretty calm about this, and so do the
students. This is Dallas, where tornado alerts in April are kind of busi-
ness as usual. The only person freaking out is the Canadian-born, New
York–based visiting author. I’ve never lived anywhere twisters are a
problem. The sum of my tornado knowledge is that they’re capable of a)
carrying Dorothy and Toto over the rainbow, and b) a lot of other things,
all of them scary. I don’t want to look like a baby in front of the kids, but
I’m literally shaking.
So I peer out from under the table at the books on the nearby stacks. A
faded spine catches my eye—Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy
Blume. Rising above my terror, I reach out and pluck the weathered
paperback from the shelf. I can’t help myself. When I was a kid, Tales of
a Fourth Grade Nothing was my book. I was in fourth grade when it was
new. It was the first time I really saw myself in a novel. In a way, it’s
responsible for my entire career. My first book was a school project. I
could have written anything. But thanks to Judy Blume and Beverly
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by Kirby Larson
Her name was Mitsue Shiraishi. And we met in the best way possible:
through the written word.
Later I would come to know the book of Mitsi: a good student who
played high school basketball. After graduation, she cared for her elderly
parents. Tended the family strawberry farm. Doted on a terrier mix
named Chubby.
At our first encounter, she was a mere paragraph in a book titled
Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American
Community. I didn’t even know if Mitsi was a child or an adult. But those
first few words were sufficient to give me a sense of her heart. Her deter-
mination. Her courage.
In 1942, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which
spoke to creating areas from which “any and all persons may be excluded.”
But the intent of the order wasn’t to exclude any and all. And there was
no “may” about it. The intent was to “exclude” every single person who
looked like the enemy. In the end, FDR’s autograph forced about 120,000
people of Japanese descent (most of them American citizens) from their
homes and into incarceration camps. Mitsi was among them.
With no idea where she’d end up, she packed what she could into the
two suitcases allowed. Would she need warm-weather clothes? Sweaters
and galoshes? Somehow such decisions were made. Maybe, like others,
Mitsi sold her sewing machine. A piano. The family car. All for pennies
on the dollar to those who fed on the misery of the soon-to-be incarcer-
ated. It was March when it was Mitsi’s time to go. Strawberries were left
to bloom, ripen, and rot in her family’s carefully tended fields.
Thousands of people were forcibly removed from their homes.
Thousands ended up in desolate places with ironic names: Camp
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by Kathryn Lasky
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by Peter Lerangis
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Do you ask a lot of questions? Do the grown-ups in your life ever get tired
of you asking, “Why?”
If so, we’ve got a lot in common, because that was me as a kid. In fact,
it’s still me as an adult.
You’ve probably heard the old proverb curiosity killed the cat as warn-
ing against asking too many questions. But if that were true, I would be
six feet under. Pushing up daisies. Deceased.
Writers tend to be very curious people.
It turns out that proverb couldn’t be more wrong. Curiosity is what
drives us to learn and discover. According to a study by the Pew Research
Center, some of the key skills needed to succeed in today’s jobs—
and especially the future jobs that will be available when you grow up and
enter the workforce—are “emotional intelligence, curiosity, creativity,
adaptability, resilience, and critical thinking.”*
What’s really interesting is that these are skills even the most sophis-
ticated artificial intelligence can’t replicate. They’re the skills that make
us most human.
Can you imagine one of the best ways to learn these skills? You
guessed it—reading books!
But don’t just take that from me. In a 2015 interview, former US president
Barack Obama said: “The most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve
learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being
comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of
grays, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive
* Rainie, Lee. “Skills Required for Future Jobs: 10 Facts.” Pew Research Center: Internet,
Science & Tech, Pew Research Center, 19 June 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org
/internet/2018/06/19/skill-requirements-for-future-jobs-10-facts/.
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So ignore the naysayers and give your curiosity license to explore. Read
more books—you’ll be amazed at all the things you can discover!
* Robinson, Marilynne, and Barack Obama. “President Obama & Marilynne Robinson:
A Conversation-II.” The New York Review of Books, 19 Nov. 2015, https://www.nybooks
.com/articles/2015/11/19/president-obama-marilynne-robinson-conversation-2/.
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by Natalie Lloyd
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by Tracy Mack
The woods behind our house were my sanctuary. Every weekend, book
in hand, I’d slip away from the breakfast table, sidle past the rust-battered
swing set, and brave the prickly vines and creeping poison ivy to my
spot. Harriet came with me. And Margaret and Deenie and Ramona and
Fudge and Sally. Here in my own tiny forest, I was liberated from my
oldest brother’s inescapable rock music, his angry drums that shook the
house, and the stream of unsavory, mop-haired boys who rehearsed in
our basement.
I’d stretch out on a flat rock and settle in for a trip to Manhattan or
suburban New Jersey or Portland, Oregon. Sometimes I’d climb the big-
gest oak and curl into the hammock of its wide, low branch. Something
about nature’s furniture and the loamy smell of damp earth and sun-
kissed leaves set my imagination free and allowed me to sink deeply into
another world. Even now, I love reading outside best of all. It’s there that
I feel most connected to something larger than myself.
Because I’d read the same books—Harriet the Spy; Are You There,
God? It’s Me, Margaret.; Deenie; all the Ramona books and the Fudge
books; and my favorite, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself—so many
times, we connected and reconnected like old friends. As they invited me
into their inner worlds, I felt safe to commune things I only dimly under-
stood about my eldest brother’s volatile behavior. My book friends kept
my secrets and provided pleasant distractions. I felt seen without having
to explain myself.
On the best weekend mornings, my day would start long before break-
fast, when my middle brother and I dragged from his closet a massive
clear garbage bag filled with Archie comics. I relished the dramas
between Betty and Veronica—and especially this time with my brother,
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by Carolyn Mackler
I was a “weird” kid. I was “cute” enough and “friendly” enough that most
people assumed I was “normal.” But I wore a thatched flowerpot on my
head (around the neighborhood, third grade). I wrote illustrated picture
books about meeting Hitler (fourth grade). I wore plaid dresses because I
liked to pretend I went to a fictional boarding school (fifth grade; the
other girls wore designer jeans). The last bit about the boarding school
dresses probably contributed to why things tanked socially in middle
school. Boys snickered at me and girls edged away from being my friend
and teachers did nothing to help. I began to feel lost and alone. And while
I always loved reading, middle school is when novels saved my life.
In books I found characters who were quirky like me or felt alone like
I did. I found characters who didn’t fit in—or sometimes I found charac-
ters who were having a blast because it wasn’t all bad. Often I was having
plenty of fun and I wanted to read about adventurous kids who were
enjoying their childhoods as much as I was. I had a best friend, a loyal
dog, and loving parents. That helps when your school life stinks.
I love reading because it has always made me feel more connected,
less alone. And that is exactly why I write. In my most recent novel, Not
If I Can Help It, I wrote about eleven-year-old Willa. She has sensory
processing disorder. That means her brain processes stimuli differently
than most people. Socks with itchy seams make Willa want to scream and
mushy foods make her want to gag and sometimes she shrieks and hops
around and wants to be squished. My son, who is now a teenager, strug-
gled with sensory processing disorder when he was younger. I did too
when I was a kid. As my son was dealing with his disability, there were
times when he felt judged by other kids—and I felt judged by other par-
ents. That’s why I wrote Willa’s story. I wanted to write a book that
someone like my son, or a kid like me, would have loved to read. The best
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by Ann M. Martin
Reading (and books, stories, and storytelling) has been part of my life for
as long as I can remember. My parents read to my sister and me before we
knew how to talk. In the evenings, when Jane and I were older, we would
curl up on the couch with our parents while one or the other read to us
from The Wizard of Oz or Charlotte’s Web or the books by Beatrix Potter.
My father made up stories about a tiny man named Mr. Piebald who lived
in the apartment-building oak tree in the woods behind our house. He
told us Mr. Piebald stories for years.
When I was young I read every day, but I didn’t stop to wonder why I
loved reading. I just enjoyed it. Long after I was too old for picture books,
I would wander into our den, scan the bookshelves, and pull out Wait Till
the Moon Is Full by Margaret Wise Brown, or The Little House by
Virginia Lee Burton, or Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág, all favorites. I
would read them over and over, examining the pictures, then go back to
my room and read The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings or Rascal
by Sterling North—books for much older readers.
As an adult I still read every single day. I read while I eat meals, I read
when I get in bed at night, I read on planes and trains and the subway, and
I try to carve out a little chunk of time every morning, even just fifteen
minutes, to settle myself. I like to go into a calm place in my head, clear
out my thoughts, and focus on someone else’s story.
So here’s a secret: I’m also a bit nosy, which is another reason I like
other people’s stories. And when you get right down to it, it’s one of the
reasons I love reading. I want to know things, all sorts of things. What’s
in that box? Where did you grow up? How on earth are you going to get
yourself out of the mess you’ve gotten into? As you can imagine, I par-
ticularly like mysteries. Who bonked the butler over the head? (The
butler isn’t always the culprit.) Why did someone bonk him? I like
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by Wendy Mass
I spent a lot of time staring at a poster that hung on the wall of my fourth-
grade classroom—a drawing of a large ship parting the ocean. The quote
on it was from poet Emily Dickinson: There is no frigate like a book to
take us lands away. The large dictionary in the front of the class con-
firmed that a frigate was a fast, powerful boat.
At that point I hadn’t had the experience of being transported any-
where by a book, and I really needed to be. My family was going through
a rough patch. Home had suddenly become a confusing place and school
was a welcome escape. One afternoon my teacher began reading to us
from a big anthology made up of excerpts from different novels. The
story she read that day was about four siblings who stepped into a ward-
robe (which she explained was like a freestanding closet), and found
themselves in a world called Narnia, full of magical talking creatures. I
was captivated. My own problems fell away as I sat on the carpet, lost in
this new world. I was too shy to ask the name of the book afterward (and
I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t paying attention!). But as soon as it was
our class’s turn for our weekly trip to the school library, I began pulling
books off the shelves, frantically searching for this story that had trans-
ported me in the way that the poster promised a book could do.
The librarian came to my rescue, gently asking me to describe what I
was looking for. I told her as much as I remembered. A minute later she
placed The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis in my hands.
I hungrily read the first page and knew this was the right one.
That book didn’t leave my hands the whole week. I ate with it, I slept
with it, I read it three times, cover to cover. During wartime, the four
siblings found their escape in Narnia, where they were powerful and
loved. Through their experiences, I, too, felt powerful and loved, and that
feeling lasted even when I closed the book. When I reluctantly returned
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by Patricia C. McKissack
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by Kate Messner
Where I grew up, there were farms and apple orchards. Neighbors on our
road knew whether you went straight up the hill to the house from the bus
or not. It was a tiny village, with one store downtown where you could
buy a dress for a school dance and one where you could buy new gym
sneakers in September. There was no bookstore. But there was a friendly
little library. And an elementary school that sent home Scholastic Book
Club flyers each month.
I’d wait and wait for the day that flyer came home tucked in my folder.
I’d go to my room, pull the cap off a fat Magic Marker, and sniff it (we
had the ones that smelled of grape and orange) while I pored over the
books on those flimsy newsprint pages. When I circled the ones I wanted,
the marker bled through the page. Sometimes it was hard to tell if it was that
shark book on page three that I wanted or the mystery on page four.
That was okay because really I wanted them both. I wanted them all.
Books were an escape from the be-careful rules and don’t-go-far walls of
my small town. They reflected my life back at me even as they taught me
to imagine more.
The truth is, my favorite character of all was a girl a lot like me—
Beverly Cleary’s Ramona, who asked too many questions and made messes
and got into lots of curiosity-fueled trouble. Remember the scene where
Ramona made a crown of burrs (like the boy in the TV commercial . . .
“Ta-da!”) and got it hopelessly stuck in her hair? I read that over and over.
Inspired by Ramona, I confiscated my father’s cigarettes and replaced
them with rolled-up paper warnings about the dangers of smoking. Like
Ramona, I got in trouble. And like Ramona, I was forgiven. Her stories
taught me it was okay to be curious, okay to be a little different.
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by Ellen Miles
Like all avid readers, I love reading for so many reasons. I read for excite-
ment, adventure, and knowledge; for distraction, for connection, and, of
course, for pleasure. But I also read for what I think is one of the best
reasons to love reading: for comfort.
A friend of mine says she loves the books I write because all the sto-
ries have a guaranteed happy ending. “It says so, right on the front,” she
tells people. And so it does, there at the top of every one of the book cov-
ers: “The Puppy Place—Where every puppy finds a home.”
Kind of a spoiler, I guess—maybe it ruins the suspense for some read-
ers, but it makes me happy to know that kids can dive into any one of my
books without worrying too much about whether things will work out for
the adorable foster puppy pictured on the cover. That kind of reading can
be comforting, like a warm blanket you pull over yourself on a gray, driz-
zly day.
A happy ending isn’t essential for comfort. Sometimes familiarity is
comforting, like a book with characters and settings we know well.
Sometimes neutral topics like bird identification or recipes for banana
muffins will do the trick. Even murder mysteries can be comforting—
there’s a whole genre known as the “cozy,” often set in a quiet British
village.
Happy endings or not, I read for comfort when I am lonely or bored or
sad, when I am sick or hurting, when I’m feeling the need for a treat and
a banana muffin just won’t cut it. I read cookbooks and comics; animal
stories and tales of adventure; novels and nature guides; mysteries and
series books (and some mystery series books, even though I’m really not
a mystery reader). When I was fifteen and spent almost an entire summer
in bed, sick with mononucleosis, I gobbled up books by P. G. Wodehouse
(old-fashioned British comedy featuring Jeeves the butler) and Ian
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by Sarah Mlynowski
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by Jaclyn Moriarty
The note meant this: At the first sign of rain, you raced, like an
Olympic sprinter, to the line, and rescued the laundry.
One day, there was a terrible storm in Sydney.
The day of this storm, my mother collected my youngest sister, Nicola,
from high school. The sky was low with angry black clouds. Wind
whipped leaves against the car. Thunder grumbled.
The car reached our driveway and stopped outside the garage. Nicola
pressed the remote. The garage door opened.
And that’s when the first raindrops hit.
“The laundry!” shrieked my mother.
She and Nicola leapt from the car and tore around to the backyard.
They skidded to the clothesline. Their hands reached up—
I’ll stop the story for a moment here, to tell you something.
Reading is strange. It’s tangled up with the real world. There’s no clear
line saying: On this side is the story, and on that is true life. Instead,
there’s a fine, fine curtain between them, and it shivers and sways, loop-
ing back and forth between both.
In my home, we didn’t have a TV, but we did have a playroom. There
were daddy longlegs spiders in the corners, and a yellow bookcase against
the wall. The bookcase was filled with my mother’s collection of books
from when she was a child. The bookcase was the focus of our days.
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BOOM!!!!
They froze.
The air shook and vibrated around them. The dogs barked, the horses
whinnied, the chickens squawked.
Mum and Nicola stared at each other.
And then they ran through the pouring rain back to the garage.
Only, the garage wasn’t there.
In its place was a giant pile of rubble.
Lightning had struck the wall and smashed the garage to smithereens.
If they hadn’t run for the laundry—if they’d driven into the garage—
they’d have been stepping out of the car exactly when it happened.
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by Robert Munsch
When I was four years old, I lived on a short, dead-end street called
Green Avenue. Cars were a rarity on Green Avenue and the street was
mostly a children’s playground.
I don’t remember adults saying, “Go play in the street,” but that is
what happened. So I went on explorations of the street. At the far end,
there was a lady who had a Scotty dog. Not only did she have a Scotty
dog, but she was so happy to have visitors, she always gave me milk and
cookies after I played with Angus in the backyard.
We didn’t have a dog. I became a sort of uncle to Angus.
One day my mother gave me a present. It wasn’t a birthday present or
a Christmas present. She explained it was a very special present, just for
me. I unwrapped it, and it was a book called Angus Lost, by Marjorie
Flack. The Scotty dog in the book looked exactly like my Angus.
My parents read many books to me, but this is the one I remember for
the great joy it gave me when I was four.
Fifty years later, I decided I needed to replace the book. I tracked it
down at a used bookstore in Australia. Bingo! I had the book.
Books let you go backward in time.
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by Jennifer A. Nielsen
In the 1970s, high fashion was the combination of brown, orange, and
mustard. Star Wars made its debut. Also, I entered kindergarten.
Back then, few incoming students knew how to read. Kindergarten
was the time to learn ABCs and maybe, if we worked really hard, we’d
get around to basic words such as stop and go, which meant to me, “Stop
learning and go take a nap.”
But thanks to the teaching instincts of my older brother, I started that
all-important year as a reader. I couldn’t wait to dive into every book in
the school.
There was only one problem:
I may have been assigned to the one teacher in the history of the uni-
verse who wasn’t equally excited.
“You can learn to read in the first grade,” she told me. “If you try to
read now, you might do it wrong.”
Wrong? Even at age five, that didn’t make sense to me. Every Sesame
Street episode I’d ever seen clearly stated that reading was wonderful.
Even Oscar the Grouch said so.
Yet my teacher asked that I only look at the pictures of those books. But
how could I stare at the words and pretend I didn’t know what they said?
That very day, I made a decision to engage in the biggest rebellion of
my life . . . well, up to age five.
I began sneak-reading. I mastered the art of pretending to look at pic-
tures, while secretly I was reading every single word. Stop and go began to
take on new meanings. Such as: “Never stop reading. Go get another book.”
Maybe that’s what my teacher meant by learning to read wrong.
Sneak-reading had a deep impact on me. It bonded me to books as
perhaps nothing else could, because even in that small way, I had to fight
for my right to read.
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by Garth Nix
When I was seven years old, I discovered the small library I had been
visiting for years was more magical than I had ever known. I was in
grade three at Turner Primary School in Canberra, Australia. For the first
time I was allowed to walk to and from school. This was the late 1960s
and Canberra was a very small city; there weren’t many cars, and all the
kids walked or rode their bikes.
Near the school there was a small street of shops, with a butcher, a
newspaper shop, a sweet shop (where we’d buy two chocolate-covered
caramels called cobbers for one cent), a general store, and . . . a children’s
library.
The library was small, not much more than a garden shed packed from
floor to ceiling with books. I already loved it and had been visiting with
my mother for years, once a week or so. I’d started there with picture
books by John Burningham, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Tomie dePaola,
and many more, moving on to chapter books and even actual novels. I
often couldn’t really understand the bigger books but I wanted to read
them anyway. Later on, I’d read a lot of these books again. Maybe this is
where my lifelong habit of rereading favorite books began. I recommend
this, because you can often get something different from a book when
you read it again, particularly as you get older.
But I didn’t really know what that library and the librarians in it could
do until I did start walking home by myself in third grade and stopped
off every day to return the book or books I’d read overnight and get
new ones.
By this stage I’d read pretty much everything that tempted me on the
shelves and I eagerly awaited the books that would appear on the “New
Books” shelf.
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by Michael Northrop
For some people, reading comes easy. They’re handed the right book as a
kid, and away they go on a lifelong magic carpet ride of the imagination.
Or something like that. Being an author, and often surrounded by very
bookish people, I hear that story a lot. The metaphor varies (and is usu-
ally better), but the story remains the same.
Notably absent is any talk of the first step in that journey: the actual
process of learning to read. The mental mechanics. When I think of
what that process must have been like for these lifelong avid readers, I
imagine that scene in A Christmas Story: “A plus plus plus plus!”
I have a different story. For me, that first step was a doozy. I am dys-
lexic. I repeated a grade and spent some time in special education. It was
difficult and sometimes frustrating. I remember sitting at a small desk in
the corner of a warm, sunny room and reading the same few Dick and
Jane–type books over and over and over again. See Michael snore.
Most of all, it was isolating. After my second year in second grade, I
was a year older than my classmates. For the rest of my childhood, I was
terrified they would find out why. Held back. Special ed. I guarded these
secrets fiercely. For years, I didn’t even have birthday parties. I was too
afraid of the words “How old are you now?”
Eventually, though, I began reading for fun. I was tricked into it by a
game and some snappy costumes. The game was Dungeons & Dragons.
I loved immersing myself in those imaginary adventures so much that it
barely occurred to me that poring over and puzzling out the rulebooks
even qualified as reading.
The snappy costumes belonged to superheroes. (My outfits, heavy on
brown corduroys, were decidedly non-snappy.) Comic books were popu-
lar with my friends, available on a rack at the local pharmacy
and—amazingly, miraculously—accessible to me. In fact, with their
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144
One of the first times I fell in love with reading, I was in Florida on a
family vacation and bored out of my mind. The most exciting thing
around was right in front of me, in the pages of The Fellowship of the
Ring. There, some hobbits were trying to make a desperate escape from
hooded riders on the outskirts of a small town on a rainy night. The riders
had been trailing them for a while; they were terrifying and mysterious
and I’d never read anything like it in my life, never felt so completely
inside a book. What would happen next? What if the hobbits were caught?
I had to keep reading.
The rain fell in sheets and the night was impossibly dark. Our heroes
had never left their small hometown; the world suddenly seemed so much
larger to them than it ever had before. Larger and much, much more ter-
rifying. As the hooded riders drew ever closer, I looked up and blinked.
The Florida sun shone brightly through the window, cast long shadows
along the floor. I blinked. It wasn’t raining; it wasn’t even night! How?
My brain had fallen so deeply into the world of hobbits and rings that
it took a few seconds for the world of sunshine and family vacations to
kick in. It was such a small moment, but I remember how far away from
the window I was sitting when it happened, what the chair felt like
beneath me, the particular quality of afternoon light that happens when
the sun sinks low enough to look eye to eye with those tall buildings
by the sea. Somewhere inside, I knew that the moment had changed me,
that a new kind of magic had revealed itself, and the world would never
be the same again.
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One of the first times I fell in love with reading, I was in Florida on a
family vacation and bored out of my mind. The most exciting thing
around was right in front of me, in the pages of The Fellowship of the
Ring. There, some hobbits were trying to make a desperate escape from
hooded riders on the outskirts of a small town on a rainy night. The riders
had been trailing them for a while; they were terrifying and mysterious
and I’d never read anything like it in my life, never felt so completely
inside a book. What would happen next? What if the hobbits were caught?
I had to keep reading.
The rain fell in sheets and the night was impossibly dark. Our heroes
had never left their small hometown; the world suddenly seemed so much
larger to them than it ever had before. Larger and much, much more ter-
rifying. As the hooded riders drew ever closer, I looked up and blinked.
The Florida sun shone brightly through the window, cast long shadows
along the floor. I blinked. It wasn’t raining; it wasn’t even night! How?
My brain had fallen so deeply into the world of hobbits and rings that
it took a few seconds for the world of sunshine and family vacations to
kick in. It was such a small moment, but I remember how far away from
the window I was sitting when it happened, what the chair felt like
beneath me, the particular quality of afternoon light that happens when
the sun sinks low enough to look eye to eye with those tall buildings
by the sea. Somewhere inside, I knew that the moment had changed me,
that a new kind of magic had revealed itself, and the world would never
be the same again.
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by Micol Ostow
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149
by Rodman Philbrick
I was eleven years old when my own special superpower was revealed to
me. My younger brother and I were avidly reading Eleanor Cameron’s
Mushroom Planet books, about two boys who build a spaceship and voy-
age to a nearby planet. Like the boys in the book, we decided to build a
spaceship of our own, out of old boiler parts and pieces of junk. Luckily
my mother interrupted us before we got to the gunpowder rocket-fuel
stage. But the books unleashed in me not only a craving for more books,
but an understanding that stories can be powerful things that extend into
the real world. Instinctively I understood that books could change my
life. That same year I came across The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton
Juster, and the deal was done. I knew who and what I wanted to be. An
author! In sixth grade, I secretly began to write stories and send them out
to magazines—secretly, because I thought announcing I was a writer
would set me apart, as indeed it would have in the very small town where
I grew up.
My dream of getting published and joining the ranks of the writers I
so admired did not come easily, as it almost never does. Possibly because
I began with absolutely no clue about how to write a publishable story.
We all know the only way to get to Carnegie Hall is to practice, practice,
practice, and the only way to acquire the skills of a professional writer is
to write, write, write. And read, read, read. And then write some more,
learning how to focus your imagination, coaxing your characters to life.
For me the reading was what drove the writing. One could not exist
without the other. There were no creative writing courses available to me.
Books were where I learned how to listen, observe, and study. They were
my own private university. My instructors were Mark Twain, Joseph
Conrad, Ray Bradbury, and Ursula Le Guin. Guest lecturers included
Flannery O’Connor, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Flann O’Brien, and Louisa
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152
That’s right,
her brown-skinned dreams,
they just weren’t there
in the stories that weren’t her story.
No, un-uh,
this girl’s reflection didn’t shine
in the book-mirrors
she was given.
It was 1976.
This child was lonely.
And hungry.
And the only one
in her classroom
who had brown-girl cheeks
and eyes wide open in a world
that didn’t seem to notice
she needed to read books that said: You. Are. Here.
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And so,
she wanted words that could feed
the deepest places
of a starving soul,
wanting stories that spoke her truth.
Langston Hughes.
A book!
Your book!
And my book, too.
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That book.
given to me by a special teacher.
That book,
with its curled pages
and warped cover,
stained and decorated with library dust,
was the mirror that nourished the growling,
empty places deep down in me.
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Your bouquet-on-paper
was as bright as the warmest day in May.
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158
by Sharon Robinson
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160
161
162
163
164
by Aida Salazar
We read the map others have traveled and see our own
crooked prints speckled on the paths.
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We read to know that ugly and pretty are twins who bicker
for the front seat.
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“Just be glad you’re a kitten and not a monster like me.” She
looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror and made a horrible
face, baring a mouthful of teeth covered with braces.
Automatically she pushed her glasses into position, ran her
fingers through her mouse-brown hair, so that it stood wildly
on end, and let out a sigh almost as noisy as the wind.
I had never read a character who expressed the exact same self-critical
feelings that I harbored. Seeing myself in Meg Murry was earth-shattering.
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168
by Allen Say
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170
by Augusta Scattergood
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by Eliot Schrefer
A few years ago I was visiting a teacher friend in Seattle, and she invited
me to talk to her class about my books. On the drive to her school, she
told me about how almost all her students were refugees from Cambodia,
and that their families were struggling to make ends meet, so often the
students would drop out of school in order to work to financially support
their parents. I started to feel worried. Who was I to talk about the love
of reading when these kids didn’t have time to go to school, much less
read books?
Still, I went ahead with my presentation, about my book Endangered,
which is a survival story about a girl surviving wartime in Congo with an
orphan ape by her side. I show research videos of my time in Africa dur-
ing that presentation. The videos of apes being goofballs, which usually
get audiences laughing, were met with no reactions.
Feeling sheepish, I asked if the kids had any questions. There was just
a long silence.
Then, finally, one of the boys raised his hand and asked, “If a chim-
panzee and a gorilla got in a fight, who would win?”
“Oh,” I stammered. “I guess the gorilla, because they’re stronger.”
“Okay, okay, what if it was three chimps against two gorillas, but they
had a little monkey sidekick, too?”
We did this for a while—primate cage-match questions.
A shy young woman in the front raised her hand, then asked, “If the
bonobo apes have these female alliances that keep everyone safe, is there
any way that humans could do the same thing, to prevent war?”
I was stunned by the question, especially coming from someone
whose family had fled wartime to come to a new country. This wasn’t an
academic or poetic question—it was a matter of personal life strategies,
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by Victoria Schwab
I did not grow up loving books. I could read well enough, but by the age
of eleven, I hadn’t yet found a book that truly transported me, that gave
me that feeling other people spoke of, of forgetting who you are, where
you are, when you are. That feeling of words on paper blurring, replaced
by the story in your mind. It sounded like magic, but it was a magic I
didn’t know.
And then, one day, my mother’s friend called us. She said she was in
a bookstore in Southern California, said there was a lady there signing a
book for kids my age, and should she pick up a copy for me? My mother
waffled, knowing I was drawn more to sports than stories, but in the end,
she said yes. And what arrived in the mail the following week was a
signed copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Needless to say, I
found the magic I was searching for in those pages, and never looked
back. I became a lifelong, avid reader, thanks to my mother’s friend who
happened to be at one of J.K. Rowling’s early signings.
Falling in love with reading really was magic. And because I’m
a Slytherin, I also marveled at the power of it all. If it was magic to read a
story and forget yourself, it was power to write a story and make someone
else forget. From that moment forward, I knew I wanted both—to read
and to write, to experience that magic myself and create it for other
people.
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by Brian Selznick
Words and pictures have always been connected for me. When I was very
young I had a lisp. Instead of saying “ssss,” I said “thhh,” so my parents
sent me to a speech therapist. The therapist drew a snake in the shape of
an S and I had to fill the snake with S’s. Every time I drew an S, I had to
make an “esss” sound with my tongue in the right place (behind
my teeth)—not an “ethh” sound (with my tongue sticking out between my
teeth). Forever after that I thought of the shape of the letter S, the sound
of the “sss,” and the snake itself as the same thing. For me there was no
difference between the word, the picture, and the sound.
Ssssssnake.
I remember reading many books by Remy Charlip around this time.
He was my favorite author and illustrator. I loved how words and pictures
worked together in his books. In Fortunately, we follow the adventures of
a boy named Ned who is invited to a surprise party. Ned has to travel far and
wide to get there and has many setbacks, including an airplane with an
exploding motor, a cave crawling with tigers, and an ocean filled with
sharks. Every time something good happens to Ned (“Fortunately he
could swim.”) the picture is in color. Every time something bad happens
to Ned (“Unfortunately there was a hole in the parachute.”) the picture is
in black and white. Each turn of the page moves us from something good
to something bad, from a picture in color to a picture in black and white,
from “Fortunately” to “Unfortunately.” The words, the pictures, and the
mood all become one and the same. I thought that was really exciting,
and I think it was Remy Charlip’s work that taught me to really love
books.
Years later, when I was making my book The Invention of Hugo
Cabret, I met Remy Charlip in real life. I was so happy to tell him how
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But more than Remy’s face is in my book. The lessons I learned from
him are also there. Remy showed me how words and pictures are differ-
ent sides of the same thing, like the snake I’d drawn as a small child.
Besides being a children’s book writer and illustrator, Remy was also a
teacher. He believed that everyone could make pictures and use language,
even if they don’t think they can write or draw. I agree with him. Think
about it. If you read a book with no pictures, you will create pictures in
your mind of everything you read, even if you never draw them on paper.
(Right now I can write the word elephant and I bet you can see an ele-
phant in your mind!) Also, if you look at pictures in a book and try to
describe them to someone, you will think of words to use pretty easily.
And the exact pictures you imagine, and the specific words you say, will
be different from everyone else’s on earth. In fact, telling stories that
combine words and pictures is what humans have done throughout his-
tory, all the way back to the dawn of time. In the caves of Lascaux, the
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by David Shannon
Well, maybe it’s old-fashioned, but I love to read newspapers. I love how
they smell, and what they sound like when you turn their pages and
snap them into a nice, flat page to read. Of course, you can roll one up
and whack stuff, too, or you can fold it into a hat. But mostly I like that
they’re full of all kinds of stories. I love to read stories.
I started reading newspapers when I was a kid. The first thing I read
was the sports section, especially the box scores of all the baseball games.
You can tell a lot from a box score if you know how to read them. You can
almost picture the whole game in your head. I always went right to the
Giants game to see if Willie Mays had hit a homer—he was my favorite
player—then I read all the other games.
Later on, after I became an illustrator, I read all about what was going
on in the world because that was my job. Newspaper publishers would
send me a story and I was supposed to paint a picture of what it was
about, with maybe a little twist that would get people interested and help
them understand the subject better. Usually I only had about twenty-four
hours to come up with something, so it was important to already be pretty
familiar with what was happening.
Now I write and illustrate books for kids, but I read newspapers more
than ever! I still like going over all the baseball box scores and keeping
track of who the good guys and the bad guys are in the world and what
they’re up to. But I don’t just read the front page news or the sports
section—I love reading the whole paper all the way through! I like to find
out how much snow fell up at the ski mountain or if my softball game’s
going to get rained out. I like looking at the all the photographs, the funny
cartoons and the cool pictures that other illustrators are doing now. I like
reading about music, and artists’ new paintings, and what books and
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180
by Peter Sís
When you are locked in a room, behind the walls of the city and the country.
When you have no place to turn for help—
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by Jordan Sonnenblick
Books have always been like oxygen to me. I can’t imagine life without
them. When I was a kid, the stories in books, and especially in comic
books, often seemed more real to me than the events that were going on
around me in “real” life. This sometimes got me in trouble, like this one
time in third grade when I was at my friend B.J.’s house.
B.J. has been my best friend since preschool. B.J. and I have always
shared books. I discovered comics first, when we were in first grade
and my dad’s barber had Avengers #138 (Stranger in a Strange Man) and
Daredevil #112 (“Murder!” Cries the Mandrill). B.J. got me into DC
comics last year, when he discovered the Legion of Super-Heroes. I lend
him my science fiction novels, and he brings me piles of fantasy books.
We spend hours on top of his bunk bed arguing over who would win in
different battles. Would Shazam beat Thor? What would happen if
Gandalf from Lord of the Rings fought Darth Vader? Could Saturn Girl
from the Legion of Super-Heroes read Professor Xavier’s mind?
These arguments get pretty heated. I once got sent home by B.J.’s
mom after B.J. and I started wrestling to decide whether Superboy was
stronger than Ultra Boy. The issue was very complicated, because we had
a list of each hero’s powers, and we saw that Ultra Boy had invulnerabil-
ity. We didn’t know what that was. We couldn’t even pronounce it. So
when B.J. said Superboy was probably stronger than Ultra Boy, there was
only one way to figure it out. I jumped on him and shouted, “Invability!
I win!” He yelled, “Heat vision! You lose!” I got him in a headlock and
shouted, “Invability beats heat vision!” He rolled over so he was on top of
me and grunted, “Super breath!”
Which has to be Superboy’s dumbest power, by the way.
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by Maggie Stiefvater
Cats with wings. Paintings that became doors to other worlds. Whispers
in the deadest of night from the deadest of people. Growing up, the books
I pulled off the shelf always had magic in them.
I recall the books of my childhood more strongly than the houses we
lived in. My father was a navy doctor, so when I was a kid, we moved,
and we moved again, and we moved some more. Coast to coast and back
again, and then, even after he got out of the navy, from town to town,
hospital to hospital. We didn’t really have a home; we had houses. Mostly
I remember the libraries—my mother always signed us up for new library
cards, first thing—and I remember the books.
I’d sit in the library stacks for hours, picking out every volume I could
find with a unicorn or UFO sticker on the spine, the universal librarian
method of marking fantasy and science fiction books. Magic, magic, I
always wanted to read about magic.
The best sort of magic, in my opinion, was small magic. Sure, I liked
dramatic fantasy worlds and huge monsters and dueling wizards as much
as anyone, but the stories that stuck with me were ones with a more inti-
mate scope: books about chemistry sets that turned out to be full of
peculiar magic spells, like in The Ogre Downstairs, or cats who were
ordinary, apart from being able to fly, like in Catwings, or girls who lived
lives a lot like mine, but haunted (Wait Till Helen Comes).
Books with big magic were great; they were escape. Literary vaca-
tions. That was good enough in a pinch. But books with small magic,
believable magic, magic that might really happen—well, they changed
the way I looked at the world. They made me look for small magic even
after I closed the pages. They made me look for small magic in the real
world.
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by R.L. Stine
People ask me what books I read as a kid, and I’m always embarrassed to
answer, “I didn’t read books. I read only comic books.”
My friends and I carried around stacks of comics with us, and we
would swap them and pore over them together, study the art and the
storylines, and spend hours deciding which to add to our collection next.
I had eclectic tastes back then—Dick Tracy, Looney Tunes, Little Lulu,
The Lone Ranger . . .
Then one day, my mother dropped me off at the little library on Main
Street. (I grew up in Bexley, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.) A librarian
was waiting for me at the door.
She said, “I know you like comic books, Bobby. I have something else
I think you will like.”
She led me to a shelf of Ray Bradbury stories—and changed my life
forever.
I dug into the stories. I couldn’t believe how imaginative they were,
how wonderfully written, how surprising, and most all of them with
tricky twist endings.
Ray Bradbury turned me into a reader. I read as many of his stories as
I could find. Then I moved on to Isaac Asimov, Robert Sheckley, Frederik
Pohl, and Philip K. Dick.
From science fiction, I began to read fantasy novels. And then the
Greek myths, fairy tales, the Norse legends.
I never forgot that librarian and the amazing favor she had done
for me.
Many years later, when I was an author and the Goosebumps series
had become popular all over the world, I had a chance to meet Ray
Bradbury. I spotted him eating a hot dog in a publisher’s booth at the L.A.
Times Book Festival.
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by Francisco X. Stork
Over the years, I have been asked by certain books to be their friend. I
don’t know how a book knows that I need a friend at that particular time.
Their offers of friendship arrive in unexpected ways. I’ll be walking aim-
lessly in a bookstore or library when, suddenly, I am drawn mysteriously
to the one who will become my friend. Later, when I start reading, I
understand why a book befriended me just then.
My first friendship with a book happened when I was thirteen. Charlie
Stork, my adoptive father, had recently died in an automobile accident. I
had known Charlie only a brief time. Seven years before, he was travel-
ing through Mexico when he fell in love with my single mother, Ruth
Arguelles. Soon after Charlie and Ruth married, we came to El Paso,
Texas, where there were better economic opportunities for our little
family.
A few months after his death, my mother had to return to Mexico to
care for my grandfather while I stayed with a neighbor. The days were
sad, but the nights were worse. I missed horribly the father and good
friend that Charlie had become.
I don’t remember how the book came into my hands. It was a thick,
old-looking book with a frayed cover. The language was old Spanish and
there were many words I did not understand. I read every night until my
eyes closed, and if I awoke in the middle of the night, the book was there,
within my reach.
There was something about the adventures of the crazy old man who
thought himself a knight that brought me warmth and light. The dia-
logues between the old man and his funny squire made me smile for the
first time in a long time. I felt less alone when I was with them. And when
I closed the book, their courage and liveliness to pursue their quest stayed
with me.
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by Tui T. Sutherland
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by Lauren Tarshis
My dad was a writer when I was growing up, and every morning I woke
up to the song of his typewriter . . . clickclackclickclackDINGclickclack-
clickclackDING! We didn’t have much money, and my dad seemed to
work way more than my friends’ dads, who put on ties and got on the
train to work in banks and offices in New York City.
But I knew that my dad loved what he did. And when he would travel,
which was often, I would go into his tiny, messy office and stand in front
of his beat-up typewriter and think, I want to be a writer when I grow up.
But then the next thought would be, But that’s impossible. And it was
impossible. Totally impossible, I was sure.
Because I had a secret back then, and the secret was that I couldn’t
read a book. I could read words just fine—sound them out, read them
aloud, no problem. But put all those words on pages with characters and
plots and by around page three all those words would be buzzing around
in my mind like crazy flies, making no sense at all. I didn’t know I had a
reading challenge. I just thought I wasn’t smart. And just like my too-big
feet and my too-frizzy hair, I was sure nothing could be done to stop
those word-flies from buzzing around my brain.
I was too ashamed to tell my parents or my teachers or my friends. So
I kept it from them. Somehow I stumbled along, faking my way through
school, never doing very well.
Meanwhile, my house was filled with books, and my parents loved
to read. My friends were all big readers, especially my best friend,
Michele, who was always talking about her favorite book characters.
Fern from Charlotte’s Web. Kit from The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The way Michele talked
about these characters, they seemed like flesh and blood. It was like
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by Sarah Weeks
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by Scott Westerfeld
The same story that made me a reader also made me a writer. The two
roles, after all, are part of the same web.
Charlotte’s, to be specific.
The story of Wilbur and his spider protector is about friendship,
of course. It’s also about how children process their growing realizations of
injustice, of loss and impermanence, and of death. But for me, Charlotte’s
Web was always about the power of the word.
Wilbur becomes a famous pig not through his great deeds or dazzling
talents, but thanks to words. The adjectives that Charlotte weaves above
his pen—terrific and radiant—are the sort that roll luxuriously off a
kid’s tongue when first learned. There’s a relish to uttering our early
“big” words. My niece, now seven, refers to everything even mildly
interesting as magnificent.
As a child, I was also a relentless repeater of new words. My sisters
rolled their eyes at how my latest pet adjective wormed its way into every
sentence I spoke. It was probably solid teaching, repeating new acquisi-
tions, but I had no conscious desire to increase my vocabulary. My
repetition sprang from a sense that words are spells. They have power on
the tongue; they are music in the air.
One of the tempting promises of reading was that more new words
would be coming my way, ready to be deployed in daily life. And that
they would bring me power.
Charlotte weaves compliments into her webs, but she isn’t simply out
to flatter Wilbur. She’s out to rescue him from a death as inevitable as the
seasons. That we can save someone with the right words at the right
time—“I love you,” “You are valuable,” “Don’t touch that wire!”—is the
height of word magic.
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by Deborah Wiles
When I was a kid, my favorite room in our house was my father’s study,
with its bookcases across one wall that were filled with . . . knowledge. I
was a nerdy kid who wanted to understand the world (I already loved it),
and I learned early on that answers to the questions I didn’t even know to
ask were found in books.
So I pulled them off the shelf, one by one, and then, sprawled across
the checkered rug in my father’s study, year after year, I was educated.
My favorite series to scour was called The Book of Knowledge: The
Children’s Encyclopedia. I opened it at random and read about how the
atomic bomb was made (which I am sure I remembered many years later
when I wrote Countdown), or how cotton was ginned and manufactured
(which I remembered as I wrote Revolution), or how to hike the Alcan
Highway in Alaska (which I have not written about . . . yet).
My favorite book in my father’s study was the Reader’s Digest
Treasury for Young Readers. I read that book cover to cover, many times.
I read about how to make musical instruments “from odds and ends,”
how to identify birds, how television works, and—my favorite—“John
Glenn’s Day in Space.” Which again led to Countdown, decades later. I
think the mind stores away what it learns, against the day it might need
that memory or that knowledge; at least I think that’s what happened with
some of what I learned in all those years of education. Who knew I would
write about atomic bombs or cotton picking or the American space race?
All I knew was that there was an immense pleasure to be had in reading
and learning, and I was like a sponge, wanting to know everything there
was to know about the world and who lived in it.
And I knew that I liked best books that had lots of ways to tell the
stories within them, books full of pieces and parts, odds and ends of
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“Writing is incarnational”
—Flannery O’Connor
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David Baldacci is the author of the Vega Jane series that began with The
Finisher and concluded with The Stars Below.
Blue Balliett’s first novel was Chasing Vermeer, beginning a series that
continued with books including The Wright 3. Her most recent book was
the ghost story Out of the Wild Night.
Jim Benton started at Scholastic with the It’s Happy Bunny and Dear
Dumb Diary series. His current Graphix series is Catwad.
Judy Blundell is the author of What I Saw and How I Lied and, as Jude
Watson, novels including Loot and many books in the 39 Clues series.
Coe Booth is the author of books for younger readers including Kinda
Like Brothers, and YA novels including Tyrell and Kendra.
Ann E. Burg debuted with All the Broken Pieces. Her other novels
include Serafina’s Promise and Flooded.
Lucy Christopher made her mark with her first YA novel, Stolen, and
has since written novels including Flyaway (for younger readers) and
Storm-Wake.
Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen are the team behind the Magic School
Bus series, which launched in 1986 and published a new book, The Magic
School Bus Explores Human Evolution, thirty-four years later in 2020.
Suzanne Collins is the author of the picture book Year of the Jungle,
the middle-grade series The Underland Chronicles, and the YA series The
Hunger Games.
Bruce Coville has been engaging young readers’ imaginations for many
decades with books including his Unicorn Chronicles series, and his Book
of Nightmares and Book of Monsters.
Edwidge Danticat’s writing for children ranges from the picture book
Eight Days to the Royal Diaries title Anacaona, Golden Flower to the YA
novel Untwine.
Lulu Delacre’s storytelling includes the picture books Arroz Con Leche
and Vejigante Masquerader and the collection Salsa Stories.
Chris D’Lacey’s fantastical series for young readers include The Last
Dragon Chronicles and The Erth Dragons.
Julie Falatko is the author of the series Two Dogs in a Trench Coat,
including such titles as Two Dogs in a Trench Coat Go to School and Two
Dogs in a Trench Coat Start a Club by Accident.
Lamar Giles is the author of the mysteries Overturned and Spin, among
other novels.
Alex Gino started their career with the novel George, and continued with
You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P! and Rick.
Virginia Hamilton was one of the twentieth century’s most highly regarded
writers for children. Her writing for Scholastic includes Her Stories: African
American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales and The People Could Fly:
American Black Folktales, as well as many novels and picture books.
Jess Keating has written for readers of all ages, including the series
Elements of Genius and Bunbun & Bonbon, and the picture book Eat
Your Rocks, Croc!
Christine Kendall’s debut novel was Riding Chance and her latest is
The True Definition of Neva Beane.
Sabina Khan is the author of The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali and the
forthcoming Zara Hossain Is Here.
Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet series was one of the first in the Graphix imprint
and has continued most recently with its eighth installment, Supernova.
He also wrote the picture book Copper.
Kirby Larson is the author of the Dogs of World War II series, including
Duke and Code Word Courage, and the Audacity Jones series.
Peter Lerangis wrote a number of books in the 39 Clues series and the
novel Smiler’s Bones, among many other works for young readers.
David Levithan has edited four anthologies of the best young writers and
artists in America, drawn from winners of the Scholastic Art & Writing
Awards, as well as co-edited the YA anthology 21 Proms. He has worked at
Scholastic since he was nineteen.
Sarah Darer Littman is the author of many realistic novels for teens,
including Want to Go Private?, Backlash, and Deepfake.
Tracy Mack is the co-author of the Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street
Irregulars series, as well as author of the novels Drawing Lessons and
Birdland.
Carolyn Mackler has written the middle-grade novels Not If I Can Help
It and Best Friend Next Door, as well as numerous YA novels.
Wendy Mass is the author of the Willow Falls series, which started with
11 Birthdays, and the Twice Upon a Time series, as well as other novels
for young readers.
Kate Messner’s writing for young people includes the Ranger in Time
series and the novels Capture the Flag and Manhunt.
Ellen Miles is the author of the Puppy Place series, among other series
for kids.
Sarah Mlynowski made her mark with the Whatever After series, and is
also one of the three writers of the Upside-Down Magic series.
Jon J Muth is the visionary creator of such picture books as The Three
Questions and Zen Shorts and the graphic novel The Seventh Voyage.
Daniel José Older is the author of the Dactyl Hill Squad series, the
Shadowshaper series, and novels including the forthcoming Flood City.
Micol Ostow has written books in the Riverdale and Mean Girls
universes, as well as YA novels including Popular Vote.
Rodman Philbrick’s first novel for Scholastic, Freak the Mighty, was
published in 1998. Since then he has written many acclaimed novels,
including The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg and Wildfire.
Dav Pilkey has reached tens of millions of kids through his series,
including Captain Underpants and Dog Man, as well as picture books
including The Paperboy and Dog Breath.
J.K. Rowling first published with Scholastic in 1998 with Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
Aida Salazar launched her career as a novelist for young people with
The Moon Within. Her second novel, The Land of the Cranes, is being
published in 2020.
Lisa Ann Sandell’s fiction for young adults includes Song of the Sparrow
and A Map of the Known World.
Eliot Schrefer is the author of The Ape Quartet, which began with
Endangered and Threatened, as well as books in the Spirit Animals series.
Victoria Schwab writes novels for all ages. Her middle-grade novels
include City of Ghosts, Tunnel of Bones, and Everyday Angel.
David Shannon keeps getting kids to say yes to his books, including No,
David!; A Bad Case of Stripes; and Duck on a Bike.
Kevin Sherry is the author and illustrator of such series as The Yeti Files,
Remy Sneakers, and Squidding Around.
Peter Sís’s illustrated work includes the picture book Robinson and the
art for Pam Muñoz Ryan’s novel The Dreamer.
Tui T. Sutherland rode a dragon onto the scene with The Dragonet
Prophecy, the first book in her epic Wings of Fire series. A Graphix
version of Wings of Fire has also been wildly popular.
Lauren Tarshis has brought history to life for millions of young readers
with her I Survived series.
Jane Yolen has shown one of the widest ranges, and has had one of the
widest reaches, of anyone who’s written for children in the past hundred
years. She has written everything from picture books (including the How
Do Dinosaurs series) to fantasy novels to young adult books, in both
poetry and prose.