I have many memories of reading and writing when I was a kid, so it’s actually kind of hard to put those thoughts into perspective, especially when I think about the most prominent books and stories that impacted me as a reader, writer, and a teacher. I know I could try to explain them, but there are just so many stories that changed me.
But I think I can certainly name a few to get the reflective juices flowing.
One profound memory I have of stories that shaped me happened when I was in my early teens and sitting at my parents’ kitchen table. I was actually sitting on the kitchen table with my legs up on a chair while my mom finished cleaning up after dinner. She had asked me to read a few stories (a frequent tradition when she was preoccupied with other matters), and so I read her two stories from two separate collections, exchanging each book on my lap when it came time to read.
One of which was Stephen King’s story “Suffer the Little Children” from his 1993 collection of short stories Nightmares & Dreamscapes (an excellent collection). In it, a third-grade teacher (a focus of King’s as it harkens to his other story about a third grader titled “Here There Be Tygers”) begins to suspect that her students are actually shapeshifting creatures that are slowly taking over her class (or it’s about a teacher’s slow descent into madness). It’s one of my mom’s favorites, and I found it especially unsettling, but I did love it.
The second story was Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 short story “The Black Cat,” which was in one of our many Poe collections. I didn’t quite understand Poe at the time and felt the story was too real. In fact, I thought it was from the perspective of the author himself. The admission of gouging out the cat’s eye with a penknife left me startled as I thought it was an admission of guilt. Little did I know that the story is simply a genius-level conjuration of a literary giant.
These stories greatly infected my taste for horror, and I sought it out everywhere and in every form, from books to short stories, and from television to film.
Another memory I have is actually from earlier in my life, roughly around third grade (uh-oh, now we have theme). My school would host a read-a-long (or a read-a-thon, I don’t remember exactly), where students would spend a good chunk of the day–if not the entire day–just reading books and immersing themselves in literature. We were allowed a sleeping bag, snacks, and a drink. For me, the consummate teacher’s pet, I ended up putting my sleeping bag underneath the teacher’s desk, as Ms. Knoblauch was elsewhere in the room, and I read Roald Dahl’s 1988 children’s novel Matilda front to back, cover to cover. It was such a pleasant experience and that book holds a precious place in my heart because it had all of the ingredients to lull me into a safe place: there was a precocious child who was an avid book reader, an evil principal (who doesn’t need a great antagonist?), and there was the love of an endearing teacher, Miss Honey.
It was only a year later I would meet the kindest, sweetest teacher alive, but that was then and this was now.
Consequently, I think about these moments often, as I am a teacher now, and I have a young daughter who is as precocious as I ever was. So, I can only think about how there are these exact moments with students in middle school and first-year college that shape their entire outlook on literacy. There are moments when you are a young kid in third grade that will forever impact you for the rest of your life. Even though I went through the same thing my students and children are going through now, I guess I’m just glad I had a good book to help me along, and I hope they do, too.
What about your own experiences? What books or stories shaped your outlook? I would love to hear about them in the comments!
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