I have loved reading my entire life. My mother used to use Barnes and Noble trips as a form of bribery, and my Christmas list would usually consist of a myriad of books. And while I have countless favorite books I've read as a young adult, there are select ones I read growing up that fostered my curiosity and love of words and literature. Some are timeless classics and some are lesser known, but I'll always keep their stories close. There are so, so many more books that were important to me as a child, and still are, but these are just a few standouts. So, in no particular order, here are 10 books that shaped my childhood.
1. "Where The Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak
"And the walls became the world all around"
Because the sense of imagination and adventure really resonated with me as a kid, and even now—I mean one of my favorite sweatshirts is a "Where the Wild Things Are" one. The world little Max would travel to with his soft-hearted monsters would continually remind and inspire me to create worlds of my own and to never let go of imagination and adventure. Plus who could forget the absolutely gorgeous illustrations?
2. "Musicians of the Sun" by Gerald McDermott
In this retelling of an Aztec myth, a being called Lord of the Night sends Wind to rescue four magical musicians who are being held captive by the villainous Sun so that they may return joy and color to a bleak and gray world. Yet another book with incredible art and adventure, I clearly remember forcing my parents to read this to me several times a day. I even dressed up as the blue musician and gave a presentation about the book in elementary school. I think what I loved so much was that Wind was such an unassuming hero, and I love to cheer on the underdog, especially when he's a magical being seeking help from other magical beings to save yet more magical beings from wait for it....a big bad magical being. You could say I like magic. Which brings me to....
3. The "Harry Potter" Series by J.K. Rowling
"We've all got both light and darkness inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are."
Come on, you had to have seen this one coming. Just in case you're a silly muggle, Harry Potter is the epic series of a young boy going to wizarding school and facing down the Dark Lord with the help of his friends. I mean, how cool is that? Harry Potter is the pinnacle of adventure and complex characters who felt like your own friends. I've bonded with so so many people over Harry Potter and have learned so much about writing and life from it. This series was so important—an escape and wonder for so many people growing up, including this proud Hufflepuff.
4. "When Jessie Came Across the Sea" by Amy Hest
This was a book my mom and I read together countless times. I even met the author when she visited my school. This story follows a young, poor immigrant as she leaves her grandmother and home in Eastern Europe to seek a better life. I always admired Jessie for being so brave and smart in a big, scary new place like America, and my favorite part was always when she reunited with her friend from the ship, Lou, after years of being separated. Plus, my young, hopelessly romantic heart always melted when they finally got together. While Hest provides a faithful tribute to immigrant life, to younger me, the book was always about bravery and the constancy of love and family.
5. "Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown
"Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere."
Like just about every other toddler in the universe, my parents read this to me every night for months and years. It's always been just a cute, little classic and a gentle, comforting story for little kids to be lulled to sleep to. Why it's so important to me however, is that, according to my parents, it was the first book I learned to read by myself.
6. Dr. Seuss Books
"You're off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting so get on your way."
Okay, this is more like a collection of books, but they are all such timeless classics. I can't imagine not having grown up with the silly rhymes and made-up words all tying together to make such beloved books like "Green Eggs and Ham" or "Oh, The Places You'll Go" (quoted above). Plus, with all these pages of rhymes, we all learned simple yet powerful messages. Sure, some books were just plain silly, but I'll never forget the encouragement of "Oh, the Places You'll Go" or the importance of fighting for what you believe in from "The Lorax." ("Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better it's not.") And of course, one of my personal favorite quotes from "The Lorax,": "A person's a person no matter how small." I could go on for hours about Seuss quotes, but let's just move right along.
7. "The Witches" by Roald Dahl
“It is most unlikely. But—here comes the big 'but'—not impossible.”
I vividly remember my first grade teacher reading this to our whole class over the course of a few days, and while I now realize it's a relatively small book, at the time it seemed like the most epic adventure ever conceived by mankind. A kid travelling with his grandmother gets turned into a mouse and accidentally crashes an evil witches convention. I remember being captivated by how sneaky and brave this little mouse-boy was—small, yet observant among these supposedly diabolical mystical people. Even before "Harry Potter" or "Musicians of the Sun," this really kick-started my obsession with magic and spells and rooting for the underdog (i.e. the mouse child attempting to thwart a coven).
8. "The Berenstain Bears" Series by Jan and Stan Berestain
When I was writing this article, I asked my parents what they remembered me being obsessed with as a kid, to which my father responded, "The Berenstain Bears. OH. MY. GOD." This triggered the memory of pulling out a box filled with Berenstain Bear books and meticulously flipping through them to determine which one I would have my parents read to me that night. I then remembered that my favorite part of the books would actually be the little poem-like moral of the story typed up at the beginning. I think the reason these were important to my childhood reading was that there were so damn many of them, and I learned to binge-read and marathon books.
9. Manga
Okay, so I'm kind of cheating with this one because there are thousands of manga series and books, and I didn't get really into them until I was a young teenager. But even still, when I discovered these Japanese comics, I fell in love with their stories—how they could be epic, sweet, or quite frankly completely bizarre, I fell in love with their art and even how they were read backwards from American books. The biggest reason these were important to me, however, was that they got me through a time when I was feeling particularly lonely in middle school. I just thought the quirky personalities and super powers were the coolest things in the world, and while I've never been an otaku and have eased up on my anime/manga intake, I'll always credit them for shaping my creativity and appreciation for different forms of storytelling.
10. "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak
Okay so for this one I'm really, REALLY cheating, because I read this book when I was a freshman in high school. But it was honestly the first young adult book I read that made me put it down after I was done and just go "wow" in absolute awe. It was a book that I would spend days and weeks and months thinking about. The WWII story revolves around and orphan named Liesel who steals books from Nazi book burnings and does her best to survive as chaos unfolds around her. Not only is the writing beautiful, but the coolest part about the whole thing is that it is told from the point of view of Death, whose melancholy, yet painfully honest prose almost makes him feel like a real person, which is pretty freaking creepy and amazing considering he's, you know, Death. Anyway, not only were the moral lessons and reflections on humanity impactful, this book also would forever change the way I read and write.
