Bibliophile
I admit it; I am a bibliophile.
bib·li·o·phile (bib'le-?-fil') n.
A lover of books.
A collector of books.
That is just a "Fancy Nancy" way of calling myself what my 1st grade teacher always called me - BOOKWORM. And it is true, I do "love books for their content, or otherwise love reading in general."
I am the one who reads the cereal box in the morning while I am eating breakfast.
I am the one whose dad (mom, husband, grandma, substitute who you'd like) always yelled at me for reading Sweet Valley High in the car instead of looking out the window at the scenery on family vacations, or for sitting in my cozy chair reading my favorite new Nancy Drew mystery while the TV was on right in front of me wasting all of that electricity!
As we all move into adulthood, the problem becomes finding the time to read and knowing what to spend our time reading that will be the most valuable for both our personal and professional lives. I have progressed to reading the news on the internet (newspapers would pile up on my front steps because I had to read EVERY page and it took me FOREVER), making a quick scan of a professional article or chapter in the latest "teaching" book, spending moments in bed with my children rereading their favorite nighttime stories, and if I am lucky, relaxing in a hot bath with the newest mystery I have grabbed up from the shelves of Barnes and Noble. The latter setting for my reading pleasure has taken on the true meaning of Teri Lesesne's book Naked Reading as I've gotten caught a time or two lying in a tub with no water because I was so caught up in a book that I kept putting off getting out. I only get in trouble now if I stay up too late and am really tired the next morning because I just HAVE to finish ONE MORE chapter before I turn off the lights!
I know that you may love to read too. Many of you have done the same things I described above. I would never have picked up a copy of Twilight if I had not seen an article about Stephanie Meyer hanging in the high school hallway or heard Amanda and Kandice discussing the 4th installment of this "vampire love story" during a lunch break at school. We all browse websites that we have heard about in professional development, search out the professional books from the last conference we attended, and try and find those fabulous children's books that we heard a colleague read or saw as we passed by the book store in the mall.
Isn't that what we want our students to do - read for the purpose of enjoyment and learning, and then be able to have a time and a place to talk about it and share their excitement and knowledge with others? I did that as an elementary teacher, but now that I am at the university level, do I talk books as much with my students? Do they know where to find the best books for their future classrooms? Am I sharing my love of books with them every time they step inside my classroom doors?
I don't know; it's definitely something to think about.
Of course, I do see an inkling of a bibliophile in my daughter . . .
This post was written for The Literacy Triad by Robin Johnson, Ed.D.
