From Nonreader to Author or What Gets People Interested in Books?

Since this is my first blog post I thought I would use it to introduce myself to you as well as cover what I know on a question people often ask. This question would be, “How do you get someone interested in reading?” Well before I give my answer to this question you should know that there was a time when I hated reading. For me it was really boring. So how did I ever get interested enough in books to become a writer? The answer actually comes from TV. Before I was a reader the TV show, Wishbone, was playing on TV. For anyone who doesn’t know, Wishbone was a TV series about a talking dog who loved adventure and he loved to read books. In the TV show Wishbone would introduce the classic books by imagining himself as a character in these books. The book he chose was based on whatever was happening at the time in his and his human friends lives. I really liked the dog and the show, and there were many books based off the TV episodes which I began reading. Because it was about Wishbone, a subject I really loved and still do, I came to love the books. This book series was called The Adventures of Wishbone and were written exactly as everything was seen in the show. Then there was the Super Adventures of Wishbone, which I began reading next, which followed the same Wishbone story/classic story formula as was in the origional series with one noteable difference-the super adventures were all new stories about Wishbone that were never TV episodes. This is what began my interest in books. I also later discovered the Wishbone Mysteries Series and Super Mysteries, which tells a little bit about the classic stories but is more focused on Wishbone, and the Wishbone Classics, Early Years, and Tales of a Pup Series. Each of these three focused the other way, on the classic story rather than directly on Wishbone. Once I discovered I liked Wishbone books I began reading other books about talking dogs and later other animal books. My interest in the subject of magic also started with an animal, but that is a different story that I might talk about on another day. So back to the question “How do you get someone interested in reading?” The answer I found is first find their favorite subject. Maybe a book based off a favorite TV show or movie, or someone they like. Even comic book characters such as the Justice League have other books that aren’t comics available to read and are all new stories. A couple good examples of subject based books are the book series: Wild at Heart aka Vet Volunteers by Laurie Halse Anderson, and Animal Ark by Ben M. Baglio. If you know someone who isn’t a reader but is interested in becoming a vet one day these two book series are fiction books with many real life vet situations and facts. Or maybe they are really interested in some Disney movies such as Bambi or 101 Dalmatians. Both of these movies were first books. Bambi was written by Felix Salten and 101 Dalmatians was written by Dodie Smith. Both also vary slightly from the movies that were created based off them and are really interesting to read to see the differences. 101 Dalmatians also had a book sequel called The Starlight Barking which is a really interesting book and is much better than the sequels that Disney came up with – 102 Dalmatians and 101 Dalmatians II, although I did like the movies. Another Disney movie that began as a book that I really like is the Fox and the Hound by Daniel P. Mannix. The Disney version may be for kids, but the book was written for adults and I would easily recommend it to adults who loved or still love Disney movies. So that’s how to get people interested in reading, and who knows? Maybe once you start someone into reading they will become a published author too! It can happen.

Before I close out this blog for today I would like to ask those of you who love to read: Did you always like to read? What started you reading and do you remember what your first favorite book was? Do you still like that book and what genre is it? And what is your favorite book and genre today?