There’s something magical about reading a book you really love for the first time. You might re-read it and continuously find new things, but those books, often discovered as a child or teenager, have a different and infinite power in their newness.
So it’s an incredible delight for me to see my own teenager reading some books for the first time that influenced me. This year in high school I’ve seen her curled up with "Fahrenheit 451," "A Color Purple," and "A Separate Peace." They are coming of age books, sometimes banned books, and in this moment of Instagram and Snapchat and phones connected all the time, I’m just excited to see pages turned and the focus of losing yourself in a book.
This youthful connection to books is the theme of this week’s show, "Reading While Young." We hear from Katherine Rundell about why adults should read books meant for children, and a re-imagining by L.L. McKinney of Alice in Wonderland as a Black girl from Atlanta. And we feature several "Bookmarks," from authors on young adult books that changed their lives.
What book do you remember most from your own childhood or young adulthood? And do you re-read it? Let us know at listen@ttbook.org.
–Shannon