Week 12: book intro - Rewrite/add on.

         There are books that you run out and buy, and then there are books that you tell yourself “no we are not reading that”. My book was somewhere in between.

            I told myself that to make Garrett love to reading he needs to see his parent read. I love to read now, but I don’t get to do much reading for pleaser during the semester. So each summer I try to find a book series and let my imagination run its course. I remember that I didn’t love reading when I was Garrett’s age, but if you find that one book that you that you just can’t put down it will all change. Garrett has to find his own books that make his mind race with confusion and wonder because the ones that I read at his age, would not interest him.  In addition as a parent I wouldn’t want him to reading those books at the age of ten or twelve for that matter.

            My childhood wasn’t full of long day in front of the TV. We had outdoor games and indoor games and that was it. We had to learn to entertain our selves sometime we could but other times we would just lay around talking about how boring it was. When I was twelve my best friend stayed with my family for a summer, she moved in with all here clothes and she also brought all her books. Books that I had never heard of after I started reading, I knew that my parent would not approve of. Knowing that my parent would find them inappropriate for my age and also for anyone for that matter made them all the more desirable. I started with the first book in the series, Flowers in the attic, by V.C. Andrews. I could remember picking up the book and being horrified that parents could do that. The book opens with a perfect family and the options are endless. After a tragedy, four sibling the main characters in this story get locked in the attic of their grandparent’s home. Given the hope that one day they can come out and meet their Grandfather. The days turn into months then years, but still being locked away in that attic. The story is full of sadness, death, incest, love and perseverance.  It was so easy to get lost in the story, easily making a connection with the main character Cathy. Could that have happened to me? I remember looking at my brothers and think would I ever love them that way? I would shake my head there is no way that could even happen. I would dream about alternate ends and it would always come back to the authors ending as the only one that worked.

            As a young mind I was so happy that I didn’t have think about what came next in my new friend’s world because there were more book to follow, that way I could know what happened to Cathy, Chris and Carrie.  I was able to watch them grow up at the very same time I was growing up.