Halloween Appropriate Blog (sort of)

I started out reading.  Or, more accurately, I started out being read to.  I loved hearing about the adventures of Corduroy Bear, Babar, Curious George, and that lovable, antisocial misfit Max.  I'm told I could recite Where the Wild Things Are long before I could read.  There are still boxes upon boxes of Little Critters and Bearenstein Bears books somewhere in my parent's house. 

When I was able to read more comprehensibly, Two of my favorite genres were adventure and horror.  At the time, Gary Paulsen was one of my favorite authors, With Hatchet and Brian's Winter being some of the best literary achievements in the history of writing (it didn't hurt that me and the main character shared a name).  Being an only child with several acres of woods behind my house, the idea of being lost in the dense Canadian forests, alone and fending for yourself really appealed to my sense of boyish exploration.  Jean Craighead George's adventure tale My Side of the Mountain, about a boy who runs away to live in the mountains and befriends a hawk, was another book that I really dug at the time.  These stories combined the eternal struggle of man vs. nature, and the charm of individualism and self in the face of adversity, in these stories I found the unique question of the reader "how would I react in this scenario"; in a way, the foundation of literary Analysis. 

Horror, on the other hand, simply let me revel in my boyish infatuation with the twisted and macabre.  Does anyone else remember those More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books?  I used to read those by the set (there were more knock-off serieses than I can list, and those were great, but nothing beats the originals).  Those terrifying-yet-un-skippable stories by Alvin Schwartz combined with Stephen Gammell's nightmare inducing illustrations strictly appealed to my early fascination with the unknown.  Did those books have any literary merit? No.  Did they scare the pants off me? Yes.  Did I (do I still) love them? Yes! Yes! Yes!  And for those that may not pay as much attention to Banned Book Week as the English Majors, just a heads up, those books were number one on the Most Banned or Challenged Book list for years.

Let's change gears again and skip ahead to high school. In high school I was fortunate enough to have a teacher that allowed us to choose our own books for book reports.  This was a freedom I hadn't had since elementary school.  Finally able to decide what to read, find something I enjoyed, get away from the drudgery of assigned reading, find new meaning int he written word!  So I started experimenting with authors like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Augusten Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Tom Wolfe, Douglas Adams, and a whole cavalcade of authors that caught my interest.  But there was one book in particular that changed everything I knew/know about a narrative.  A book you've never heard of.  Brian Clevinger, internet famed author of 8-bit theater and the comic book series "Atomic Robo".  In his book Nuklear Age, Clevinger tells the story of the goofy, lovable, idiot man-child superhero Nuklear Man and his reluctant and much more intelligent side kick Atomik Lad (Sparky).  This almost 700 page novel goes through the antics (and sometimes mundane) lives of being a superhero.  It's comedic, heartwarming, intriguing, and fun-filled.  *SPOILER*SPOILER*SPOILER*SPOILER*SPOILER*THIS IS A SPOILER WARNING*  But then, after around page 600, the book takes an unforeseeable change; one that turned the way I look at the basic hero narrative on its head.  The unaware main character turns into the most powerful being in the universe, a villain kills half the worlds population in a second, and Sparky's girlfriend, who the reader has come to absolutely fall in love with, is killed off.  And all these changes are permanent.  The hero in a single moment looses the love of his life, and his best friend/mentor.  And the book ends.  But it is one of the most unexpected, satisfying endings to a book I've ever read.  Why? Because it felt real.  The ending came to its natural conclusion, and though it pains me every time I read it (at least once every couple years), it is the only way it could have ended.

So why am I talking about all these books I love to read?  Because I believe, above all else, relateable content that a student can sink their teeth into is the most important part of someone becoming interested in reading.  If you use content that the students are interested in, they will want to read, and if they want to read, it's a good thing.  If a student likes what they are reading, they can begin more steps into high reading: asking questions, analyzing the text, seeking out other books of interest.