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My preschool has a traveling teddy bear named Honey. Students get to take him home for a weekend and then write down what they did together. At the end of the year it will be compiled into a book so we can each have a copy. I describe my stories orally to my parents and they write them down. This is the same way cultures have transmitted folktales and lore for millennia!
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Big sister teaches me to read so I can be chapter book-competent by kindergarten. No big surprise she went on to become an elementary school teacher--she's even won the state award for best English teacher! That picture there is the first chapter book I ever read independently. I still have it.
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My intermediate school (where my nieces now go to attend!) encourages reading by doing a monthly reading raffle. You get an entry for each book you read, and when your name is drawn you can pick prizes, from books to toys to the grand prize of a trip to Eegee's with the principal and the winners from other grades. My principal has the coolest vintage truck that looks something like this.
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I go through a phase where I decide that reading anything for teens will make people think I'm immature. It's time to read "real" books for adults. I go about this by discovering chick lit and by reading whatever the New York Times seems to be obsessed with. I'm really glad I got over this. You should never feel embarrassed of your reading tastes, and a lot of the books I read around this time were, in retrospect, terrible, navel-gazing Literary Fiction by self-important white dudes. Blecch.
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After I attend summer writing camp in 2003 (and again in 2005), I get really into poetry--reading it and writing it. English class focuses on dead writers; now I want to know about the living ones. I start with the camp's own faculty: Lenard D. Moore, Meg Kearney, Cornelius Eady, and Kimiko Hahn. I go on to discover Billy Collins, Li-Young Lee, Kevin Young, Nikki Giovanni, Galway Kinnell, Sylvia Plath...
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The Tucson Festival of Books launches in 2009 and I immediately sign up to volunteer. I also make a shirt with a pretty niche reference to my favorite book series, and I wear it to meet the author and get the book signed. It's Megan McCafferty, and the book is Sloppy Firsts.
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I start my master's program at Simmons College in Boston. On the first day of crit (criticism, critical theory...our class tagline? "crit happens"), we are asked to divide ourselves on different sides of the room based on our answer to this question: "Are you a book person or a child person?" The question haunts me to this day. Ask me about it sometime!
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Books for grownups? I don't know her. After two years, I graduate from Simmons with two master's degrees and I am firmly dedicated, unashamedly, to children's and YA lit as my main squeeze.
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I spend two years as a school librarian in northern California. During this time I meet some great kids and read some great books. It's also when my anxiety disorder fully manifests and gets somewhat untenable...one of the ways it comes out still today is that I feel paralyzed whenever I finish a book and it's time to start a new one. What if I choose the wrong one? (Never mind that that's not really a thing.)
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After leaving my school librarian job and moving home to Tucson, I start my PhD program at the University of Arizona, where I study--what else?--children's and young adult literature
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My first book is published! It's followed by another one later that year.
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My third book (and first book with my name on the cover) is published!
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In January, I start my tenure as cohost of Book Riot's Read Harder podcast. A few months prior, I began cohosting their Hey YA! podcast.
