The books worth sharing: A "My Bookprint" guest post

It's Thursday and that means another guest Bookprint post from a Scholastic employee from around the world. This week we have Ariel Magnes, who recently went off to grad school. Before she left, we knew we had to get her Bookprint for OOM. Ariel was a manager at The Alliance which hosts the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards each year. Read on to find out how she chose her Bookprint; then, stop by You Are What You Read to create your own. (And don’t forget to leave a comment telling us your own Bookprint story!)

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I’ve always been an avid reader. But the books that have had on the biggest impact on me were the ones that were read to me or the ones I shared with other people.

The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown - The Runaway Bunny is the first book I remember my parents reading to me. It’s also the least traumatic bunny book I can remember from my pre-K - 6 years. Classic children’s literature always has their celebrity bunnies being baked into pies (see “Mr. Rabbit” from Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit); portrayed as bossy or neurotic (see Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh or White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland); rabbits that are almost burnt alive (see The Velveteen Rabbit); rabbits that are too creepy or vampiric (see James Howe’s Bunnicula series) or rabbits that are highly war-like and political (see Richard Adams’ Watership Down). The Runaway Bunny is just a timeless story of a baby bunny that imagines himself taking on a variety of disguises before he must concede that he can’t escape his loving mother. Out of all these anthropomorphic bunnies, I always felt the rabbits in The Runaway Bunny were the most human.

The Fantastic Flying Journey by Gerald Durrell - My third grade teacher was in a wheelchair, but took trips around the globe and had our entire class hooked on this book. To find great uncle Perceval, the three Dollybutt children and their great uncle Lancelot embark on an around-the-world trip in a hot air balloon. To make matters more interesting, Great Uncle Lancelot has invented a magic dust that enables him and the children to communicate with all the animals they meet. This book (and my teacher) made me want to become a world traveler.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling – As a teen I loved reading fantasy and science fiction but there weren’t many books in the genre that adults or teachers would take seriously. I remember explaining to someone much older than me that even though this book had wizards and werewolves, it also tackled real world issues like bigotry, the stigma of illness and the importance of friendship. It’s the first time I remember talking to an adult about fantasy books and being taken seriously.

Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley - The summer I read this book I was just about to start high school and none of the books on my summer reading list could be found in the local library. It’s a good thing I discovered a battered copy of Alex Haley’s Roots in my parents’ basement. Over the course of a week I was immersed in the narrative, traveling from the Gambia to Maryland in a cramped slave trader’s ship, following generations through the civil war and present day. Roots deepened my interest in history and gave me a new faith in summer reading lists.

Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi - I spent a year working in China shortly after I finished college, and there wasn’t too much room in my suitcase for books. I was also a new teacher running short on lesson plans. A friend sent me the graphic novel Persepolis 2, the sequel to Persepolis, which follows Iranian author-illustrator Marjane Satrapi as a teenager struggling to adjust to western culture and finish high school in Europe. One of my Chinese university students happened to love comic books and asked me what it was about. The pictures and clear language made it very easy for her to understand, and sections of the book became the basis for an entire unit on travel and cross-cultural experiences.

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Previously On Our Minds:
* Introducing: You Are What You Read!
* Reading full circle (A "My Bookprint" guest post)
* Mapping my book DNA: A My Bookprint guest post