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Bleekindigo
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Username: Bleekindigo

Post Number: 44
Registered: 06-2004

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Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 10:01 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

For me, that book was Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.

Whenever I go to a childs B-day party and they are turning 1-That is one of the gifts.

I do not like Green Eggs and Ham
I do not like them
Sam, I am

I do not like them here or there
I do not like them anywhere
I do not like them in a boat
I would not, could not, with a goat

I will not eat them in the rain
I do not like them on a train
I do not like them in a box
I will not eat them with a fox

I do not like them in a house
I would not, could not, with a mouse
I do not like Green Eggs and Ham
I do not like them
Sam, I am
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Chrishayden
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Username: Chrishayden

Post Number: 465
Registered: 03-2004

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Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 10:25 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Bleek:

Can't remember the name of the book but I tried to steal it from a department store when I was 3-4 years old. My mother was mortified and we went and took it back--she was goodhearted, naive and trusting like most colored folk were in those days, God rest her soul. We had got clean away with it and were way down the street--may have been on the streetcar if I remember correctly--I think it had clowns and stuff on it and that started my lusting after books.

I guess I shouldn't have told that one.
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Bleekindigo
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Post Number: 45
Registered: 06-2004

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Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 10:56 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Chris that is funny! I have to know though, how did your mom know that you had the book before you reached your home? Did you tell her?

And then you had to take it back--gosh.
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Chrishayden
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Username: Chrishayden

Post Number: 466
Registered: 03-2004

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Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 11:37 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Bleek:

We didn't make it home. She saw me with it either when we got down the block or we were on the street car--she knew she hadn't bought it, so

I didn't tell her. I was trying to get over. Almost did. I didn't try to steal anything again--at least when I was with her.

Ah, she derailed a promising career---
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Cynique
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Username: Cynique

Post Number: 869
Registered: 01-2004

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Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 12:37 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

"So Big" by Edna Ferber. The style and substance of this book completely captivated me.
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Abm
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Username: Abm

Post Number: 554
Registered: 04-2004

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Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 01:03 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I remember Shakespeare's tragedy MacBeth and Stephen Cranes’ Civil War epic "The Red Badge of Courage" being among the first great works of literature I enjoyed reading. And I also loved reading Greek/Roman mythology.

However, the very first forms of recreational reading I indulged were comic books and pornography.

My bestfriend’s 'liberal' aunt gave us free books she swiped from a distributor of adult magazines that she worked for. And when we asked her years later why she gave those books to us she said I wanted to make sure that when you boys grow up you would like women.

Her plan worked.
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A_womon
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Username: A_womon

Post Number: 354
Registered: 05-2004

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Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 01:57 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

well abm now I see why your waking thought are consumed continually with S-E-X ....You were warped at a young age!!!

My mother used to read african fairy tales to us when I was very small, about a silly little boy who always did the opposite of what he was told. My mothers voice as she told those tales inspired me to explore the world of the written word.....
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Abm
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Username: Abm

Post Number: 561
Registered: 04-2004

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Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 03:50 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

A_womon,

Touché, my friend. But hey, it is better to start your life reading about sex than it to fail to learn to read and spend your entire life getting f@#$ed.


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Njanene
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Post Number: 13
Registered: 04-2004

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Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 04:01 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I read so many books when I was young and it is hard to pinpoint a certain title. I can recall titles such as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, etc. As an adult, the author that made me really start reading regularly again was Fyodor Dostoevsky. I took a seminar in college featuring his work and since then, I've been a totally avid reader.
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Thumper
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Username: Thumper

Post Number: 221
Registered: 01-2004

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Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 08:54 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hello All,

Good question. I had always loved reading but I didn't really have a passion for it that I do now. The book that started my passion was Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline. It was spring and my mother had just got through reading it and put it down. I can not remember what made me pick it up, but I do know that I was enthralled with reading books after that, by then I couldn't get enough.
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Whistlingwoman
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Username: Whistlingwoman

Post Number: 37
Registered: 01-2004

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Posted on Thursday, July 29, 2004 - 05:55 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe
A Wrinkle in Time
Are You There God, It's Me Margaret
The Secret Garden
Nancy Drew Mysteries

Whistling Woman
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Kc_trudiva
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Username: Kc_trudiva

Post Number: 87
Registered: 04-2004

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Posted on Thursday, July 29, 2004 - 08:55 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Harlequin Romance for Teens
Amityville Horror
Mandingo
The Color Purple

ess
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Sisg
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Post Number: 79
Registered: 01-2004

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Posted on Thursday, July 29, 2004 - 01:14 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Charlotte's Web
The Boxcar Children
Don't look under the Bed
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Zambia
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Username: Zambia

Post Number: 14
Registered: 02-2004

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Posted on Thursday, July 29, 2004 - 09:11 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Gosh, my age is probably showing. Love to you all being such great readers at such young ages. I fell in love with reading when my mother gave me my first book -- a book of my own ! It was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I was also captivated by the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books (this was before television) and all of L. Frank Baum's "Oz" books. When I was a little girl in the early 1950s there weren't any children's books by African American authors available to me, but I eagerly read Jet, Ebony, and the Kansas City Call newspaper.
By the way, I saw Troy on C-Span's coverage of the Harlem Book Fair. Good for you! I just got back not too long ago from the American Library Association Convention in Orlando and saw lots of fine children's book authors there, as well as Edard (The Known World) Jones.
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Zambia
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Post Number: 15
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Posted on Thursday, July 29, 2004 - 09:12 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Sorry, everybody. I spelled Mr. Jones' first name wrong. It should be Edward Jones, not Edard.
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Reppskearn
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Post Number: 8
Registered: 01-2004

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Posted on Friday, July 30, 2004 - 12:13 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I ask this question of my students every year. As a child the book that I loved was A Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I remember loving this book because it was the first in which I saw illustrations featuring African-Americans. As a teenager I hated reading and really didn't read much--only what was required in my high school English classes. However, when I went to college, my first semester I had to read There Eyes Were Watching God and Black Boy. Both texts ignited in me an insatiable thirst for African-American literature. I especially loved Richard Wright and went on to read Native Son, The Outsider, and Uncle Tom's Children. This was during the early eighties when several African-American women writers gained prominence and so I read works like The Color Purple, The Women of Brewster Place, Tar Baby, Song of Solomon and Mama. After reading these writers, I could then return to the "classics" that I was suppose to read in high school--but maybe didn't or read over them. I was able to enjoy works like The Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, Animal Farm, The Great Gatsby, Great Expectations, and others. The irony of this is now I'm an English teacher and I have students whose attitudes about reading mirror my high school experience. So as I said at the beginning of this post, this is a question that I ask my students each year in hopes of directing them to literature with which they are able to make some type of connection and hopefully ignite within them a fire for reading. Over the years I have been quite successful with authors like Jacqueline Woodson, Walter Dean Myers, Rita Williams-Garcia, S.E. Hinton, Sapphire, Sharon Draper, and coutless others. REK
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Arioso_hum
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Post Number: 4
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Posted on Friday, July 30, 2004 - 06:47 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Several:

* The Bible
* Comic books were the first fun books for me
* Dr. Seuss books were second
* Any book or story by Ray Bradbury
* Les Miserable by Victor Hugo
* Autobiography of Malcolm X by A. Haley
* Interview with a Vampire by A. Rice

I have always enjoyed reading poetry but when I read Etheridge Knight I developed a passion for it.

Rondall
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Emanuel
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Username: Emanuel

Post Number: 55
Registered: 03-2004

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Posted on Sunday, August 01, 2004 - 01:45 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I have to say the Curious George series. My sister was a librarian and used to bring them home to me all the time. I still get a kick out of Curious George smoking a pipe.

-Emanuel
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Akaivyleaf
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Username: Akaivyleaf

Post Number: 85
Registered: 01-2004

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Posted on Sunday, August 01, 2004 - 03:53 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I have to agree with Green Eggs and Ham. I love that book to this day and it sits on my computer table-even now. Another children's book I loved was "The Birds New Nest" it was a Golden Book and I think I had every one of them when I was child. I think the love of reading for me was sparked by being read to every night before bed and seeing my mom read. I wanted to do what she did. (Those were the days)

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Soul_sister
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Post Number: 11
Registered: 01-2004

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Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2004 - 11:28 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hey All,

I have to chime in - I have two reasons

Superficially -- the trophy for the 8th grade bookworm -- don't remember the exact name of the award -- but since I was no athlete - this was my superbowl. And you know I WON -- smile

Sincerely -- Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I felt like the protagonist was speaking to me about my own situation in which I felt a similar pang of "invisibility."

On the lighter side - Trixie Belden -- I have been a sucker for a good mystery -- tee hee



Good question - peace
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Klb
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Username: Klb

Post Number: 48
Registered: 01-2004

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Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2004 - 08:40 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe - 3rd grade
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry- 6th grade
The Cat and the Hat- reading it to my first born- now 14 and bought me the anniversay edition for christmas
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Urban_child
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Post Number: 8
Registered: 08-2004

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Posted on Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 08:07 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

The book that caught me was Friends & Lovers by EJD I was a freshman in college had came down with pneumonia and my roommates mom had made me a getwell basket and she had stuck the book in there I got bored one day started it and finish it within 5 hours before I knew it I had called my roommate to get her to purchase everything he had out by the time. Within those next few weeks I found myself reading things that were listed in his genre now I read anything I lay my hands on.
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Cynique
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Username: Cynique

Post Number: 1122
Registered: 01-2004

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Posted on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 12:54 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

If you have aspirations to be an writer, you might want to diversify your reading tastes, and investigate some Toni Morrison or Walter Moseley. Don't box yourself into just one genre. You don't learn a whole lot by doing that.
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Urban_child
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Post Number: 12
Registered: 08-2004

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Posted on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 04:57 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Cyn,
I have somewhat add a little bit of diversity to my reading areas but maybe soon I will get bold enough to do a Toni Morrison, Walter Moseley or one of the great classics! My goal is to read one of Zora Hurston books by the end of the year. Thank you for your words of encouragement!
MLB
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Moonsigns
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Post Number: 95
Registered: 07-2004

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Posted on Sunday, August 29, 2004 - 12:06 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. It is a true story about a girl who lived in Hiroshima when the nuc bomb was dropped during WW II. She developed leukemia because of the radiation she was exposed to. I was in about 4th or 5th grade when I read the book. It touched me deeply, even at such an young age. I remember weeping while reading it.

I have always loved poetry --Where the Sidewalk Ends was one of my favorites when I was a little girl!

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