THE BOOKS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE by Susie Potter

I did not grow up in a home equipped with “literature.” My single mother, who had barely finished high school, liked to flip through true crime books, so we had a few of those on the shelves, but their gory photos turned me off. My older sister, however, had once loved to read. Later, with more of her time engaged with boyfriends, she’d retired her books to a battered blue suitcase in the attic.

Lucky for me, I loved to explore the attic, trying on the dusty clothes and looking at tattered photographs. I was hungry for adventure, and I found it when I uncovered that suitcase. Inside, there were books I actually wanted to read—books with young girls on the cover, books with big words and the occasional picture. I didn’t know it at the time, but when I lugged that blue suitcase down the pull-down attic stairs, I carried my future with me.

The first book to come out of the suitcase was Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary. Through this book, I met practical, stern-faced Beezus who had to contend with a wild-eyed little sister named Ramona. And, when I put the book down, luckily for me, there were many more. I zoomed through Ramona the Pest, Ramona the Brave, Ramona and Her Mother, Ramona and Her Father, and Ramona Forever. It was in these books that I came across the word “davenport,” an old-fashioned word for sofa. And, lo and behold, my third grade teacher asked in class one day if anyone knew what that same word meant. Waving my hand wildly in the air, I explained its meaning and won a beautiful gold sticker. “I bet you anything,” she told the class, “she learned that word from a book.”

Thanks to my adventures with Ramona and the first real praise I’d earned in school, my desire to continue reading was set in stone. I begged my mother to buy me more books by Beverly Cleary, and done with those, I moved on to Harriet the Spy at my sister’s suggestion.

Louise Fitzugh’s book introduced me to plucky Harriet, who spied on her neighbors and jotted her observations down in a secret notebook, all as her preparation for an imagined future as a successful writer. Of course, like every child who reads this book, I vowed to do the same…though nothing of much interest seemed to happen in my neighborhood. Still, Harriet taught me that, to be a writer, you had to observe the world around you- take it in and learn from it, allow it to change you. Years later, reading the book as an adult, I would discover the literary allusions and the true brilliance of the story- a brilliance I might never have been able to comprehend had I not developed a love for reading at a young age.

And while Ramona and Harriet stuck with me as strong female role models, it was The Baby-Sitters Club series that really changed my life. These books were about four young girls—desperately old and cool at their ripe age of 13—who started their own babysitting business and became successful entrepreneurs in their own right. They taught me that girls can do anything they want to, and I never forgot this lesson when I became a woman myself.

Years later, working my first real job, my boss was talking about how she was trying to get her daughters to read. “I have a whole box of old Baby-Sitters’ Club books at home,” I said, “you can have them.” She wrinkled her nose at me. “Oh no,” she said, “I want my girls to read real books.”

I was taken aback, a bit offended. Those were real books—their impact on me had been real. Here I was, the first person in my family to graduate college, an English professor teaching at a college when once the mere notion of attending one had seemed an impossible dream. I knew that had happened because of the books I’d read as a child, but now suddenly they weren’t good enough.

Sadly, this was not the last time I would encounter such an attitude. Just recently, a colleague told me that others had snickered at my choices for “favorite books” on the department website. But, I’m okay with that. As Meg Ryan’s character explains in You’ve Got Mail, “When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.” She’s absolutely right. These books I so loved may not be classified as “great literature,” but they are great to me. They are great in the impact they have had on me and in the way they have shaped me as a person.

I was a child with no real hope, no real role models, no real future, but books gave me all of those things. Any book can do that if you let it. Based on my experiences, I believe that children should read. They should read what they want, within reason, and their literary interests should be encouraged and celebrated.

These days, I teach literature. I publish stories. I’m working on a novel. I am in love with words, with knowledge, with reading, and I owe it all to Ramona Quimby, Harriet M. Welsch, and the four founding members of the Baby-Sitters Club.