{"id":214,"date":"2011-12-16T10:40:14","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T15:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/?p=214"},"modified":"2013-12-26T15:36:19","modified_gmt":"2013-12-26T20:36:19","slug":"what-did-you-read-as-a-kid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wrote-about\/what-did-you-read-as-a-kid\/","title":{"rendered":"What did you read as a kid?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading through Gwen Bell<\/a>‘s letter this morning, she talked about reading as a child. She took the conversation to Google+<\/a> and asked three questions.<\/p>\n

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    \n
  1. Why did you read what you read as a kid?<\/li>\n
  2. Who or what encouraged you to read?<\/li>\n
  3. As a kid, was it the quality of the writing or the quantity of it that mattered to you?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    The more I thought about it, the more I wrote so I turned it into a post here instead of a comment there.<\/p>\n

    1. Why did you read what you read as a kid?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Reading was my escape as a kid. We didn’t have cable TV, and to this day can’t get it where I grew up. Books are where I got my adventures and stories. I was always a voracious reader. I would often read a book during classes in school when I was bored or already knew the material.<\/p>\n

    I got yelled at more than once for having my nose stuck in a book instead of paying attention to the teacher.<\/p>\n

    I grew up in a small, rural town in northern Virginia. Berryville was a town of about 2,000. I grew up reading because it offered my imagination a place to go and stories to live out which were more exciting than the cows and apple orchards surrounding the farm.<\/p>\n

    When I was young I read a lot of Encyclopedia Brown<\/a>. I loved the detective tales. Perhaps it’s because my dad was such a huge Sherlock Holmes fan but I loved those stories.<\/p>\n

    When I got older I found Roald Dahl<\/a>. I fell in love with The BFG<\/em>, James and the Giant Peach<\/em>, Matilda<\/em>, Danny The Champion of the World<\/em> and of course Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    The Chokey in Matilda<\/em> and the dream bottles in The BFG<\/em> captured my imagination growing up. The BFG<\/em> resonated with me because I was such a big kid. I was always the tallest kid in my school until 8th grade when I had a math teacher who towered at 6’8″ barely eclipsing my 6’4″.<\/p>\n

    I never read any of Dahl’s adult books which I didn’t even know existed until a couple of years ago. They lack the magic of his children’s work.<\/p>\n

    I’ve read his autobiography, Boy<\/a><\/em> which was enlightening and gave me more insight into the man with whom I had shared many hours of my childhood.<\/p>\n

    2. Who or what encouraged you to read?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Both of my parents encouraged me to read. They were both college educated and knew the value of education in life and wanted me to have the same advantages of a good education. It also provided endless hours of entertainment and information.<\/p>\n

    Part of my love of reading came from both parents having owned and worked in the printing and copying industry.<\/p>\n

    They founded Circle Graphics then Copy General and with it came my love, borderline addiction, to reading. Much like my father, I am barely able to walk past a poster, sign, pamphlet or anything else with words without stopping to investigate.<\/p>\n

    3. As a kid, was it the quality of the writing or the quantity of it that mattered to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    I don’t remember thinking of either of these when I was a kid. I would say quality because while I read a lot, I read specific authors or series.<\/p>\n

    Once I found Encyclopedia Brown, I read lots<\/em> of those books. The same went for Roald Dahl. Once I found his books, I read nearly every children’s book he wrote. Many of them I read more than once and in every case was highly disappointed by the movies in every case.<\/p>\n

    Fun Fact: I never read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/em> growing up. Sure, I had seen the movies starring Gene Wilder but I hadn’t ever read Dahl’s original until I was in high school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Reading through Gwen Bell‘s letter this morning, she talked about reading as a child. She took the conversation to Google+ and asked three questions. Why did you read what you read as a kid? Who or what encouraged you to read? As a kid, was it the quality of the writing or the quantity of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[65,255,188],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrote-about","tag-books","tag-gwen-bell","tag-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1541,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/1541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}