The book that really affected me in some way was The Great Kapok Tree, and I’ve mentioned before how it was very beneficial to my literacy. The book was a main focus in my second grade class so a lot of activities were based around it and it helped out if you enjoyed the book. When I first read the book I loved it because of all the animals that are seen and the message the story was trying to give to kids. It was so interesting to see animals asking a human to save nature and that’s one thing that I never forget about that book. The book brought all the students together because of all the projects that were created based on the book. As a class we worked on making the book into a play that we performed to our parents and some other classes. Then we all worked on letters that were mailed to the President about saving the rainforest and everyone was happy to share with each other what they made. I remember making a letter that when you open it, a jaguar’s face is in the middle and the mouth was popping out. This book helped me with reading and writing in English so it’s tough to forget this book on the list of things that helped me become a better student. I remember trying to read this huge collection book of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. I remember that I would have so much trouble understanding the jokes but I loved looking at the things the characters would do. It did help me in trying to read English because I would struggle a lot but once in awhile I would figure out the joke.
When I was younger I remember that in my house we didn’t have that many books when I was only speaking Spanish. But when I started to read in English as well as my brother, my mother would take us to the library very often and we would check out almost three books each. When our school would have book fairs my mother would always buy me as many books as she could. I started to collect Goosebumps novels all throughout elementary (I still have all the books in toy briefcases in the garage). It was mostly the children who would do a lot of reading in the house but I think we started to read so much more because my parents understood how important education was and they wanted to see us have success. I did notice that my family would get the newspaper but the only things that I would read were the comic strips.
There are two books that I’ve read and they’re very opposite of each other. During Spring Break I read The Watchmen and Where The Wild Things Are. I read The Watchmen because I took a course on adolescent literature and this was so much hype build around this graphic novel with the movie coming out. In the class I didn’t get a chance to read it but watching the group report on the graphic novel it sucked me in. To me, The Watchmen is just an amazing novel that’s filled with so many philosophical ideas and the story is frightening to me. It reminds me of a dystopia and I love reading those kinds of books. Judging it as a comic would not be sufficient because it gives so much more than what a comic gives a reader. I read Where The Wild Things Are because I heard that they made it into a movie and I wanted to read what it was about. I remember very little about the book so when I read it was like I was having a childhood moment as an adult. It’s such a short story but I thought I was so amazing and I loved overanalyzing the small book. I loved the concept of imagination in that book.
