The Long-Term Influence of Reading

I'm not really sure what it is that causes some people to enjoy reading and then other people to loathe it. And, more often than not, I'm surprised by people I find on both ends of the spectrum. Either way, I absolutely love to read.

Well, I love to read when it isn't part of the required curriculum.

Anyway, I think this had something to do with the fact that my childhood home always had some good books in my formative years. And I was thinking about some of my favorite reads from say, ages 5 through 10 and why I liked them and what ways they influenced me:

1. Green Eggs and Ham. Dr. Suess. My all-time favorite. I heard he wrote that book as a $50 bet with a friend that he could write a legitimate children's story using no more than 25 different words or something like that. I think this is why I like people who are truly individuals.
2. Yertle the Turtle. Again, Dr. Suess. I often wonder if the moral of that story is the reason that I don't have much desire to use other people for personal gain and dislike people that do and love it when they get their comeuppance.
3. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day. Judith Viorst. Man, we've all been there...and I love how Alexander had those moments you couldn't really explain like how his marble went down the drain. As a kid, I was always having those moments...and I wonder if my love of this book explains my why I see the glass as half-empty.
4. Flat Stanley. Jeff Brown. Even when I was young I always wondered about what else was out there. Maybe it was the reality that in Alabama we never really went anywhere other than the beach or Gatlinburg. I still think the idea for this story is incredible, and now incidentally, elementary school curriculums have kids using Flat Stanley as a geography project.
5. The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald. Clifford Hicks. I actually got into the entire series and they were my first "chapter books." There were all sorts of adventures about how he would develop a newspaper thrower for his paper route, or a pulley system to make his bed up in seconds. I think is where I get ideas like trying to buy a "solar Yard-Goat" in order to keep from mowing the lawn.

And there's some great stuff out now for kids, too, like Bently and Egg and The Polar Express and collections of Shel Silverstein's poems that I got to read to my kids (who both love to read, too).

We'd all do well to turn off the television and read more.