I remember in grade school, my mom told me I should read these books about a wizarding school and I dismissed it at first because I thought it sounded lame. Nonetheless, she brought the first Harry Potter book home from the library for me to try. A couple days later I was already on the second one. It’s hard for me to pick only one book out of this entire series but there was one factor that made me choose the fifth one and that was the introduction of Luna Lovegood. Growing up I was a weird kid and like most weird kids, I was picked on and bullied throughout grade school. I became very quiet and kept to myself a lot. Which is why I related to Luna so much. She was fucking weird! And she was picked on, too. But unlike me, she didn’t care at all. That never stopped her from being herself so why should it stop me? It means a lot when you can find someone to relate to, even if it is a character in a fiction book.
James Gleick's Chaos (Viking, 1987) changed my life. Quite simply, I was on a path, and after reading it I was on a different one. I was a music journalist. When I came across Chaos, I had spent a lot of time and effort becoming a music journalist. The book is about chaos theory. It's about the disparate scientists who were working between the lines of different disciplines. It's about sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It's about how paths can change unexpectedly. Reading Chaos blew my head wide open. I was suddenly aware of so many other possibilities. I quit my job and went back to school. Now I teach college and write my own books. I still write about music, but now I write about a lot of other things. Also, after a few false starts with books that didn't stick, Chaos turned me into a reader. I starting reading it 20 years ago this month, and I haven't stopped reading since.
It was a dark blue bag, embroidered letters in gold that spelled VLAD, this bag was my nemesis. Every week this bag would go to school with my son and it would return home filled with a book he couldn’t read. He was in 2nd grade, had a stutter, and couldn’t read, he was so frustrated he stopped trying, he had simply given up. As his Mother I was able to do a lot of things for him, this particular “thing” I couldn’t fix, I didn’t even know how, or where to start. I did what I could and sent that blue library bag back and forth knowing it would come home filled with frustration and disappointment. In 2007 we were given a gift in the form of a quirky book, stuck somewhere between fiction and comic. Out of that damn bag came Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The conversation that night was the same “Ok Vlad, sit down and read, give it a go for 20 minutes”. The outcome of that night was vastly different. I had done dishes, made the next days lunch and realized I hadn’t seen or heard Vlad in close to an hour. I peeked into his room and saw him READING… Really Reading and enjoying it. He checked that book out 3 weeks in a row so he could finish it; and finish it he did, cover to cover that book. This booked changed my life that night and so did the books that followed. It taught me there is a book for everyone and you have to keep looking. It also shaped my future, I have pursued a career in Library Science and have become a steward for this Little Free Library. Under my watch no child will ever be without access to a good book, or someone to guide them into the world of reading. Together we can, Together we will. Rachel Griffeth
