Take a sharp left at nostalgia and keep going until you reach Hogwarts. 


Ah, let me be honest with you guys! If you didn't already know, I wasn't that big of a reader as a kid. In-fact, I wasn't one at all. I just wasn't. I'd pick up books here and there that were popular at my school (Junie B. Jones, Captain Underpants, Heartland, Holes, The Baby-Sitter's Club, etc) but for the most part, I was more focused on Disney soundtracks and whether or not my parent's would get me one of those Barbie cars you could drive around your yard.

A lot of the books that I did pick up I'd never finish. If they were a part of a series, I rarely continued on with it. I think my attention span just wasn't there and I hadn't found the right books. Because in the times that I found the right books, I'd devour them and I've never forgotten them.

As a side note, I didn't become much of a reader until my mid-teens. When I did start reading more frequently, it was WILD to me. Wild in the sense that I haven't stopped much since. 

That being said, this weeks post is shorter than my usual ones! I have a few books that came to mind immediately. I was going to include some Dr. Seuss books in here as well but I couldn't decide on what to list--so consider this an honorable mention before we dive in.



Well, well, well, try to contain your shock. I mean, we all know that Harry Potter is my favourite book series of all time. It's where so many of us started. I'm no different. From the first time I saw the first book at a Scholastic book fair, I knew I'd love it. And I still do. I'm not sure there will ever be a series like it for me--one that I've devoted so much of my time to. I feel like this series is entwined with nearly every inch of the person I've grown to be as an adult.


This series came almost immediately after Harry Potter from me and it captivated me in a way that is similar to how HP did. I always associate the two together and will probably always cite them as the two big reasons I grew to read as kid. Sadly, when I was a teenager, I purged a lot of my children's books and donated them to charity. I definitely regret that now but I've been buying them as I see them and am close to having a whole set again.


At some point during grade school, just as we started to explore chapter books, we ended up reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Well, it was read out loud to us, mostly. The experience itself was wondrous and probably the first time I realized that fantasy was something I'd grow to love in the future. I loved it so much that I convinced myself that I could get to Narnia through the little cabinets under the sink in my Grandma's bathroom. No joke.