Like any kind of love, my love for books has license to grow, harden, weaken, and mature. Unlike any kind of flower (to which love is often compared), my love for books does not endure a blooming and wilting and an end that will probably come with my own. In reality, there are many winters and many springs and many in betweens in the life of a love (and in the life of a girl) for which one book alone cannot account. That's why I, reader, and also I, human being (because what kind of one would I be if I were not the other, as well?) list two books, not resulting from any indecision, which made me love books.

The first is the Magic Treehouse Series and I read the first book in the first grade. I enjoyed reading before- my mom made sure of that- but it was only after constant prodding from her that I finally split open the plastic wrapping on that four-book set she had stuck on my little bookshelf.

Boy, was I glad I did. Aside from the fact that Mary Pope Osbourne's tales transported me from world to world, I was reading a real chapter book. I think I've always wondered about each little stage of life and when or if I would ever reach the important ones. Well, at six, that important step was reading "real" books. I was well aware that authentic readers didn't flip through picture books in their spare time, analyzing the complex relationship between Dick and Jane and the social pertinance of Frog and Toad, so reading the Magic Treehouse stories offered me access to a heightened world which second-graders (and all the other adults) inhabited. I was now allowed to call myself a veritable reader.

The books also fed a burgeoning fascination with different periods and places in history and their interconnectedness with each other. While the writing style of the books made them easily accessible to younger children, the author by no means spared us readers the tragedy, the unfairness, the reality, of the historical periods in which she wrote. Not only did that make me feel more mature, but it also proved to me that I could cry at the end of a book or become furious at the actions of a character. These books transformed me into not a reader (because I had, after all, been reading picture books before), but a reader who could engage her humanity when she read.

Flash forward nine years. A lot of time has passed since the days of reading for fun or pulling quasi- all nighters just to finish that last chapter. By the end of 9th grade, I had no time to read, and, much as I wanted to reignite that child-like fervor (wisdom?), my reading revolved solely around what my teachers assigned me in school. However, when, come June, I obtained copies of my summer reading books, I fell head first into The Crucible.

Wow.

I finished Arthur Miller's play in a day and was so wrought with pure anger I astonished myself. When was the last time I had cried like that over a fictional character, stitched together not by veins and blood vessels, but by syntax and semi-colons? The last time I had felt such ire towards a character I could punch her? The shock of the emotions resembled that of someone recovering from a lost love, only finally realizing she could love again. That's when I realized I had lost a love- or at least weakened it sufficiently- and that I wanted it back.
     

When my sophomore year began, I learned all about close textual analysis and discovered just how much there was to uncover in a work already glowing with power, insight, and emotion. From the light of The Crucible, I rekindled my love for books.