Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I actually have the kind of a different story.
About when I hit fourth or fifth grade, I stopped reading.
I fell out of it. It happens alot to that boys, I hear, at about that age.
I didn't get back into it until an teacher
in the eighth grade hand me a novel
and require me to read one of the novels she had read, that she knew about
because I was dodging out of my book reports.
I was sneaking around them, so she wanted to make sure
that I was reading a book that she had read. So she made me pick one off her little rack,
and it was a fantasy novel. I'm
now fantasy novelist; I'd never read one before.
I remember going to her after reading this book, it was called "Dragon's Bay"
and just loving at it
and saying to her
"People write books about dragons! I can't believe this." She said, ya, there's a library full of them.
So I went to the library, this was the school library. And one of my favorite memories is
looking through the card catalog,
because we still had those back then,
and I said well if there's going to be another book about dragons, maybe it
starts with "dragon" in the title. and so I took "Dragon's Bay" and looked at the next
card
in the catalog and I still remember
being there, it's one of those memories since that's
locked in my mind and finding Ian McCaffrey's "Dragon Flight," which is a Hugo award-winning
fantastic
science fiction fantasy novel and
going in and just reading through the libraries entire stock of whatever
fantasy novel they had there.
And I really appreciated
the variety that they had there for me to delve into and that's
what turned me into a writer. The librarian, I actually went
back to school
just add a couple years ago and I met with a librarian who was a
wonderful person as well. and
She would always guide me toward the books that I wanted after and I'd
fallen into this fantasy thing. She knew
which books
would appeal to me and
that's why we need good literacy professionals librarians and teachers,
because without somebody pushing me, and I only needed a little push, I was
right on the edge already, but someone pushing me, and saying you could read this big
book
Brandon. You will love thisbig book. Without somebody doing
that, I don't know
if I would be a writer. I've got a three year old, he is just discovering
the library. We love to take him. And he's just discovering that he can go and get
any book in there that he wants.
I remember that feeling. First realizing that these are all
books I can read, all of these?
Any of them?
I'm really particularly
frustrated with the budget cuts that are taking librarians out of schools.
This is a big deal, because you know, this is very important to me, my librarian
and that teacher
together, but
without the librarian to be handing the right books to kids. You don't
get these powerful readers without somebody to guide them along the way a lot
of time. And I don't think
that the people cutting the budget understand just how vital it is
to have somebody there as a resource to the kids.
I don't think they understand, at all
what they're losing. Now as a parent
I believe that parents have the right to choose
this is not something appropriate for my child, but
I worry most
about things where people are challenging
books because of the ideas presented.
Not even the content, content is another issue, content meaning graphic content or
things like this.
But when they ban a book because the ideas are ideas you don't like,
what you're doing is insulating yourself. I have a number of projects going on.
One of interest that is a few years out is called "The Rithmatist"
which is about
some... it's really weird, I write these great fantasy books, and what it is
is these crazy kids who duel with chalk.
They draw circles around themselves on the floor and they scribble out these
creatures and things that cross the floor. They kind of have these magical duels and
it's about a school for people have this talent, except
the main character is the son of the cleaning lady
who gets free tuition
to the magical school. He can't do any of this stuff. He doesn't have any of these magical powers.
But it's the story of
the boy with no magical powers, the son of the cleaning lady going to this school
and kind of getting pulled
into this culture and things like this, when he actually can't do it.
That's coming out in 2013, and of course out of the last
book of "The Wheel of Time." Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time,"
which is coming out next year.