by Michelle Hornick

"Did you do Cliff last night?" This question was asked more often in my junior and senior AP English class than anything else! Even more often than, "What the hell was Shakespeare trying to say ?" I think I owned stock in Cliff's Notes. It's hard to believe, as I look back filled with guilt, that I was such a slacker in high school. Now, don't take that the wrong way. It is just hard for me to understand why I didn't read my assigned texts through high school. I was certainly reading other things: Danielle Steele, Jackie Collins, Kathleen Woodiwiss, Joyce Carol Oates. It was as though I didn't enjoy Hawthorne and Melville, or Dickens and Dostoyevsky. It was just that I enjoyed reading other things more. In fact, ever since I can remember, I have loved to read.

Reading has always been many things to me. It is very distressing when people don't read more often or say they (gasp!) hate to read. My sister Kathy and I frequently get into arguments because the only thing she will read is the closest copy of Soap Opera Digest. She, thank goodness, is the black sheep of my family. Ever since I learned to read my own name, my parents have nourished my love of reading.

In the beginning, my desire to read was spurred by desire for attention. I wanted to be able to read Chapter Two in Green Feet before anyone else in my first grade class. I wanted to be able to tell Mrs. Sinclair why Ted and Jill and Pug had fun in the "Big City" and what chores they did on the farm. Even if I didn't really care what Ted and Jill and Pug were doing, I wanted to be able to tell people I could and find out!

It is Mrs. Pakovich I have to thank for igniting my desire to read for myself. Once she started reading James and the Giant Peach after recess, I was never the same again! Was it possible that books could make you laugh and tell you stories you wanted to hear! I couldn't get enough! My favorite special activity every week was Library Day! Everywhere you looked in the library there were books just waiting for you to come and open them! They were just waiting to tell you a story.

Then, I discovered Judy Blume and recurring characters. When I first read about Fudge swallowing the turtle in Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing, I had to find out what he was like when he grew up! I practically tore my mom's arm out of the socket as I dragged her to the car. I had to get to the store to buy Super Fudge. And then there was Sheila. I hated her character in Tales... but when I found out Judy Blume wrote a whole book about her, I couldn't survive my meager existence without it!

I became obsessive about books. I even asked for them as Christmas presents. If I got one Nancy Drew book, I had to have another. I couldn't just stop with Anne of Green Gables. Oh no, I had to take her all the way to Avonlea and back.

I remember when I was in fourth grade and I broke my nose. I knew I had to stay in the hospital for a few days, so I went to the library first. I checked out seven books, everything from Pocohantus to Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. I read them all, too.

In sixth grade I made a very important connect between reading and writing. One afternoon in Walden's Bookstore I stumbled across a Sunfire book. These were YA books, historical fiction, geared toward girls. The basic plot of all these books was a heroine caught between two men. Change the setting from Colonial New England to The Civil War to The Titanic and --vavoom! You have a bestselling series. I owned ( and still do) 22 of those books at last count. I loved them. I loved reading about the young women, and the different historical events ( History was always another favorite hobby). I loved it so much that I decided to write my own book. Michelle Hornick, Sixth Grader at New Brighton Middle School was going to be the next Margaret Mitchell! ( I had also read Gone With the Wind by this time. I didn't understand all of it, but I read it!) Needless to say, since I'm not famous, my book never got past the first six pages. However, it was fun trying!

I remember in eighth grade, my love of reading taught my a very important lesson: Eighth Graders can be viscous when a classmate reads ahead in the assigned text. Here's the story: Mrs. Italia had assigned Chapters of Johnny Tremain for homework. Now, if you don't have a father who was a history teacher, like my father, the you probably would not have been interested in Johnny Tremain and the whole Revolutionary War setting. Especially if you were an eighth grader. I loved that book. I finished it well before everyone else did. It class it was hard for me to answer questions without giving away the end of the book. I can still remember the look on Lori Johnson's face when she found out I was done reading.

"You finished reading the book? You finished reading the stupid book?" Lori barely managed to squeeze the words out in an audible tone through her clenched teeth. I looked at the ground, I squirmed in my seat. I knew I had no other choice but to make excuses.

" I was bored last weekend. I had to stay home. I - I- I didn't have anything else to do."

BUUZZZZZZZZZZZ! Wrong answer. Admitting you have no social life as an eight grader is as bad as admitting you finished the reading assignment early, and I paid the price. I didn't sit with Lori at lunch for three days. But what was actually worse about the whole incident was that I actually tried to make excuses for my love of reading.

Reading for me was a knowledgeable escape. It was the only way in which I was bad. I picked books that would give me information--real, valuable information. I figured that since in Are You There God... they did bust exercises, they were going to eventually talk about sex! Hey, I had to learn somehow!

I also remember when my step mother found me reading one of her romance novels. I was about 14. She though that the book might be just a bit to explicit for me and tried to give me a Daniel Steele book to read. Too late! It was all down hill from that Judy Blume book. I was already through Jackie Collins, and boy had I learned a lot!