Monday, April 23, 2012

Week 12: book intro


            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 pleasure 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 that. I soon got lost in the story, easily making a connection with the main character Cathy. Could that have happened to me? 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.     

1 comment:

  1. God, that friggin book! My daughter brought it home one day sometime in middle school and it only took me about a minute's glance before I wished I was the kind of father who decided what his kids could and could not read.

    But all the middle school girls were loving it, and if it totally warped her, she has managed to hide it pretty well over the last 35 years.

    :)

    I think ideally you have to give the ignorant reader some idea of what it was you found in the book that you connected with and that would have horrified parents.

    Up to you: I'll read a rewrite or take it as is.

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