My Reading Journey – Sage

January 19, 2026 - By Library Staff

My earliest memories of reading involve sitting on the heater vent, under a blanket, and listening to my older brother read The Cat in the Hat or Green Eggs and Ham. I remember being fascinated with how he could recognize sight words and use phonics to sound out words he didn’t know. I couldn’t wait to get to school and learn to read. A few short years later, books opened the door to countless new worlds.

Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park was the first chapter book series to pull me in. I remember thinking about her character, a little girl with a big personality and some sass to match (little did I know then, I would be raising a little girl with a big personality and the sass to match). As I read more of Junie B. Jones, I found myself wondering what would happen next in the story and what it would be like to have her as a friend in my first-grade class. Every book was a brand-new opportunity to peek into Junie B’s life- and I couldn’t get enough!

In middle school, I was introduced to more non-fiction reading. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is an autobiography that I have read a dozen times. To dive into a book and see the life that someone lived was something that has stuck with me for my entire life. Reading an account from someone who lived through such a terrible experience has helped me see the world through other people’s eyes and strengthened my empathy for those whose lives differ from my own.

High school was a struggle for me, in reading and real life. My mom passed away shortly after I turned 15 and my only solace was turning to books. Lemony Snicket’s A series of Unfortunate Events, Harry Potter, and The Twilight Saga were some of my favorites to dive into. These books and many others were my escape from the grieving process when I didn’t want to think about my own life anymore. However, literature classes in school were a different story. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are both wonderful books, but at the time, I wasn’t in the right headspace to read, analyze, and write essays about such sophisticated works, I was simply looking for an escape from reality.

Reading into adulthood, I enjoy many different genres of books: witchy romantic comedies from Hazel Beck, fantasy and horror from Stephen King, historical fiction from Jodi Picoult, and a memoir from Paris Hilton, just to name a few. A huge part of my reading in adulthood involves reading to my kids! Some of our favorites include anything by Dr. Suess, Dinosaur vs… by Bob Shea, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff, Green by Laura Seeger, Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang, and Pete the Cat by Kim Dean. Being able to read and enjoy books is such a wonderful gift this life has given me, and I hope to pass the joy of reading onto my children as well as anyone else looking to find a temporary escape from this wild ride called “life”.