Confessions of a Bibliophile: Beginnings

If my love for reading were to turn into a tall tale, the balladeers would probably claim I came out of the womb with a book already in hand and glasses firmly plastered on my face.

Having educators as family members, I was never in short supply of books. My cousins and my sister can attest to that fact. When I was little, I would pick out a handful of books for my parents to read to me; however, there was one book I would urge to be read to every single night, and I mean that literally people. It was a spinoff of Disney's Bambi called Bambi Gets Lost.

                                                                 And so it begins

I don't know what it was about this book that I adored it so much, maybe it was all the animal pictures. Anyway, my parents read it to me so much, I pretty much memorized the whole thing, and if my parents would forget a certain passage I would have to call shenanigans on them and tell them to read it right.

Like I said before, besides Bambi, there were a plethora of other books to keep me company: other Disney books (like Pinocchio, Cinderella, Dumbo, Winnie the Pooh), some Sesame Street books, Golden Books (like the Little Red Caboose), and more Dr. Seuss and Berenstein Bears books than you can shake a stick at. My parents would alternate bedtime story time (Mom would read one day, Dad the next).

As I got older, my father taught me how to read, and the first book I can ever remember reading independently was Three Little Pigs.

                                        Today, Three Little Pigs; tomorrow, War and Peace

My father was also the springboard in getting me interested in "real" books. After I had reached a certain age, my father believed I had outgrown reading Dr. Seuss books and such and he read to me books like Charlotte's Web, Beverly Cleary's Ralph and The Motorcycle trilogy, her tales of Ramona Quimby and Harry, Bunnicula, and a children's book of stories from the Old Testament (which really gave me a leg up in CCD class at the time). Dad also introduced me to some classics in literature like Treasure Island and Tom Sawyer, and even though he's not much for fantasy literature or movies, he read to me such fantasy classics as The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit, and all seven books of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. I'm sure there must have been other books my father read to me, but for the moment, they escape me.

           I'd probably have to say in all honesty, Tom Sawyer and Aslan were probably my first literary  heroes

This probably lasted until I was eleven years old when I decided that I was through with bedtime story time and I would simply read by myself from now on, although at the time, I wasn't as yet the obsessive reader I am today. That would start to occur a few years later, thanks to some colorful vampires, and I'm not talking about the ones who sparkle.