My Reading and Writing History

Dear Mr. Coon,

I first fell in love with books when I was two years old. The book was Goodnight Moon, the bedtime story that my parents read to me almost every night. However, shortly after learning to read on my own, I became dissatisfied with picture books, and was hungry for something more. I accredit my current passion for reading to The Phantom Tollbooth, one of the first novels that I was able to get my hands on. The fantastical journey of Milo and Tock through the Doldrums, Dictionopolis, Digitopolis, and the Valley of Discord, first exposed me to the power of books to transport the reader.

These days, I use my summers and vacations to do the bulk of my pleasure reading. Unfortunately, the amount of homework I have during the school year does not leave room for much more than “junk food reading” to unwind before bed. But in the summers, I have the time to read as much “meat” (as Dr. Allison would call it) as I want. I love reading books that make me think: stories with unexpected plot twists, complex characters, intertwining storylines, and moral lessons to be learned.

This past summer, one of the books I read was Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. My mother (the person on whom I often depend to recommend a good read) had given the book to me sometime before exams started during the school year, and it sat on my bedside table as a reminder of what the summer months would bring. I started it on the night of my last exam. I do not want to ruin the ending of the novel, but, much to the alarm of my younger sister who stumbled upon me as I was finishing the book, I cried through the whole last chapter. That’s one of the scary and wonderful things about reading: the words have the ability to make us both laugh and cry.

My writing abilities, like my passion for reading, have developed overtime. I hope that I am a stronger writer today than when I first struggled with spelling in elementary school (My biggest problem was with the world “government.” I always forgot the “n.”) But some things have remained the same: from the one-page vignettes that my friends and I wrote in second grade, to the novel I wrote for my eighth-grade English final, to the more intensive writing in high school, I have always loved telling stories. My biggest writing accomplishments have come in the form of articles and journals. In recent years, I have become a journalist in the formal sense, writing for newspapers and publications both in and outside the school. However, I have always been somewhat of a personal journalist, recording my thoughts and memories to look back on later in life. I have diaries and journals from trips from when I was seven years old, a log I kept during the year leading up to my Bat Mitzvah, and a book that I faithfully wrote in every day for six weeks while traveling in Spain and Germany last summer. Right now, I am working on becoming a more adventurous writer. One of my weaknesses as a writer is my fear of taking risks. I am, at times, overly conscientious of the reader, and forget to push the boundaries of my skills.

Other times, I am less conscientious of the reader, and write blog entries that far exceed the word requirements. (579)