A Love of Reading

My own love of reading was inspired by my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Malone, who read to us every day after recess. I remember well the stillness of the room, 30 bodies hunched over their desks, chins resting on fists as we lamented the travails of Tao, Bodger, Luath, Laura, Mary -- poor blind Mary! -- and of course the tragically doomed Charlotte.

I remember too the days we were so utterly entranced with Mrs. Malone's reading that we begged her to keep going, and sometimes she would, admonishing us she was cutting into scheduled mathematics to do so, but relenting even so, smiling in her emerald green suit, book propped open atop her desk, mouth pursed just so.

Those afternoons were heaven.

Here are the books she read:

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

And by Laura Ingalls Wilder --

Little House in the Big Woods

Farmer Boy

Little House on the Prairie

On the Banks of Plum Creek

By the Shores of Silver Lake

The Long Winter

Little Town on the Prairie

These Happy Golden Years

Thanks, Mrs. Malone, for instilling a love of reading.