Looking back, I don’t come from a family of readers.
My parents don’t own a lot of books. Growing up, I occasionally saw my Mum with a book in her hands, my Dad has never been one to read. So I don’t really know where my love of reading came from. I do remember having picture books as a kid, but I know a lot of adults who read picture books as kids that aren’t really big readers as adults, so what makes a reader? What makes that leap into literature that some people can’t seem to get enough of?
When I try to think back to the first novel I ever read alone, I think it was Ripper and Fang by Margaret Clark. It was about a boy who adopts a dog from a shelter. I was about 7 or 8 years old, and I really wanted a dog at the time, so it was an excuse for me to read about puppies really. It was partly the story itself, but I think I loved the idea of transporting myself into the book and living it with the character.
Not long after that I read Walking the Boundaries by Jackie French. Now, that was a book that changed how I saw reading; that book really made me see my world differently. But, I digress because I’m not here to talk about the books themselves. Each book that I read as a child changed how I saw my world. I became fascinated by learning about different lives and people through reading. I think in some way, to read is to give you an interest in the world around you. I know you could take an interest in the world in a lot of other ways, but for me, I wanted to be as close as possible to the people I was reading about. Reading lets me really understand a character’s thoughts and feelings in a way that a movie cannot.
Books don’t just transport you, they also let you fall in love with characters, and when you’re a bit of a dorky kid like I was, books can feel a lot like friends. As a young kid, I found a lot of comfort in the characters from the books I read. When I was a lonely adolescent, some of my favourite characters were cherished friends and some of those characters shaped me into who I am today. As an adult, my love of reading has changed a little. I do still love particular characters, but now I read because it lets me learn about people, about their motivations, their different lives, and the distant places they visit.
I guess what makes me a reader is that desire to really get to know the world around me. I want to know how other people tick, and sometimes I also want that escape after a long day, and to be transported to a life I’ve never experienced before.
What makes you a reader?
