The Series That Changed My Life | Pt 1

Greetings readers!

Let’s get nostalgic.

It’s a simple question many people ask: “What book changed your life?”

The complexity comes in answering. For me at least, and I am sure many of you would agree. No one book changed my life. No one book had everything I was looking for. No one book had a full representation of who I was, rather it was multiple books. Series of books. Multiple series of books that I learned from, harboured intense feelings toward and ultimately changed me.

So we are going to start from the beginning and move forward. I am counting the series that have impacted me in one way, shape or form. There isn’t really an end to this list. As life goes on, I keep reading more series change me and this list grows!

Those of you who know me might spot some familiars and go “Well…duh!” and some might surprise you. I doubt it though, I am about as open as a…well…book!

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Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park

So some of you know that I hated reading growing up. Going to the library at school consisted of me picking up picture books, but in Grade Two we had to start taking out novels. Books without pictures. The horror. I couldn’t fathom reading a page of just words. Words that I didn’t know their meanings or how to pronounce them. No.

I used to be a Gaston…..*shame*

I saw all my classmates taking out books and reading them just fine. I (who was very prideful) took out books just like them and never actually read them! I hardly ever read my assigned books for language too. Eventually my teacher caught me. She noticed how I was struggling to pronounce words and when she interviewed me about my book, I knew nothing about it! She told me that I had to try and I was also afraid of being reprimanded for not reading again, so I listened to her.

My teacher was actually quite nicer when she told me to read.

The next time I went to the library I found a bucket full of thin-ish looking chapter books. An entire series, I realized about this coocky girl named Junie B. and her adventures in school. I made a pledge to myself in the moment, standing in front of the boxes that I would read this entire series no matter what. And I did. I read one every week or so and continued to do so until I found other series that drew me into my reading mode. I loved Junie B. It was the perfect series for me. A little comedy, a lot of drama and just good fun!

via Goodreads

I’ll always be thankful for Junie B. Jones and Barbara Park as they mark the beginning of my reading journey.

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Now we are going to skip forward a few years and meet twelve year-old Rendz! In other words, The Golden Age of Rendz.

Over the years I read lots of great books, I went to the library three or four times over the summer to take out books, but none of them really impacted me or made me addicted to reading. That comes later!

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

It was a January, some years ago. I was at my cousins’ house after school as usual. My older cousin arrived and I saw that she was clutching a black book with a weird/cool-bird-thing on the cover. Tween-Rendz was intrigued, so I asked my cousin what she was reading. To quote her: “How do you not know?” Apparently these books were rather popular and her hold from the library finally came after weeks of waiting. Long story short, she ended up buying them to avoid the long library wait and I borrowed them from her in February.

I read the entire trilogy in nine days.

I always said that reading books slowly made them more enjoyable, but for the first time I had experienced the joy of being completely engrossed in a story that you finish it before you even realize. Everything about THG just hit me in all the right places. The action, the romance (even though it was a triangle), and the heroine just completely transformed me. Literally. (I braided my hair like Katniss for the next three years…#TrueStory) Then the movies came out and were great and I was just completely submerged by this genre of dystopia and  fantasy.

The big thing about THG is that the series made me less hesitant to head into the teen section or to explore the YA section at Indigo. I visited the library more often, took out lots of more books and read them faster than ever. My YA journey really started with this book series and I have never looked back!

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Last one of this post! It’s really no surprise!

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The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Controversial Bit: It didn’t begin with the books, it began with the movie.

C’est vrai! It was December 2005 and baby-Rendz demanded that she and her family watch the movie she has been seeing advertised on TV lately. Her mother said “Your going to get scared by all the monsters,” but Baby-Rendz insisted. So we bought the tickets and I watched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the first time!

My mom was right, I was supremely scared of the monsters.

My cousin would eventually buy me a DVD of the movie and that, ladies and gents, is the beginning of a phase I am never going to grow out of!

BUT..the books? Where do they come into play? In the 6th grade my teacher decided to read LWW to us and I was literally over the moon because that meant we would also be watching the movie at the end of the unit! Of course while studying the book we had to find all the symbolism and metaphors and all those other fancy-dancy literary terms (plus I went to a Catholic school, and this is C.S. Lewis so you know Jesus was brought up a couple times too), but all of that really took a side note. For me, I was realizing that my favourite fantasy world could be explored in more ways, that I could venture further into the world with the other books, I just had to find the motivation to do it.

That motivation didn’t come until the following year when I bought a beautiful bind up of all seven books and read the entire, humongous tome in a month and a half. It was fantastic, I found new love for LWW and also found other faves in The Horse and His Boy and The Silver Chair!

Narnia was such an important feature in my life. It took up (and still does) most of my thoughts, I would coerce my friends into playing “Narnia” at recess, I would reenact my favourite scenes at home and find my favourite quotes to write out. The obsession is never ending. I know they may not be the most politically correct books and C.S. Lewis is pretty problematic himself, but I cannot deny what a huge impact these works had and still have on me.

Narnia was my first fantasy world that I visited and even though I’m sure there are other amazing worlds to explore, I will always choose Narnia as my go to.

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Alright that’s enough for now! These are just the beginning books, the ones that really impacted me as a kid and tween.There are still a few more series that changed me in some way that I will dive into in other posts.

Let me know what you think! As a kid what are some books that really changed you? Or perhaps they made you fall in love with reading? I would love to know!

Happy reading!

~ Rendz

*Disclaimer: All gifs via giphy.com!*

The Evolution

Greetings readers!

I have decided that this week I would give you a little more information about me. Tonight I will be sharing with you my journey to becoming a reader.

Like many people out there, reading is one of my most treasured pastimes. The ability to read is one of my most beloved gifts and it has opened my eyes to worlds unseen.(Literally because most exist within the pages of a book) There are so many things to discover and learn from reading. It enriches your imagination and makes you witness the impossible.

To be frank I was not always the biggest reader. In fact I disliked reading very much when I was a child, especially as I was just beginning to learn how to read. It was difficult for me to pay attention to the words and so my progress was very slow. Many times I would just end up looking at the pictures and making up my own story and when the time came for teacher student conference, I would sit in front of my second grade teacher embarrassed. I was the girl who said “is-land” for island and “sweeter” for sweater.

Anyways, eventually as time went by and my mom complained that I was spending to much time in front of the T.V., she dragged me to the library. There, I picked out a couple of books, took them home, read half of one, returned them and sat back down on the couch. Clearly her attempts to get me into reading failed. So in one last try she threw this at me:

“Ay, hija you will never be as smart as the other kids if you don’t read.”

I am not a spiteful person, nor was I back then. But this hit home. I tremendously disliked being called less intelligent then the other kids in my class. I was always the smartest in my class because even then I was a nerd. I always did my homework (save reading study) and aced every test. (Now when I look back I see I could be very boastful! Bad Rendz. Show some humility.)

Anyways, I took my mothers bait and at school the next day I went to the school library. I took out one book; Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park. I brought it home, sat down, and read. Perhaps I had finally chosen the right book because I finished it in a week and went back for the sequel. After Junie B. I read the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osbourne. From then on I slowly found my reading interests and visited the library and book fair more frequently. (Too often for my mother’s and father’s sake!) Soon enough next time I went to the library I chose more books that peaked to my interest. I was becoming a better and faster reader.

Yet I was not a book dragon. I still did not find that complete pull towards books. Then one summer my cousin introduced to this famous YA novel. I don’t know if you guys know this book. 😉 It was really popular in 2012. It has nothing to do with hunger, really it was about the game. That’s right I read The Hunger Games. All three, in a total of nine days. I had finally found my calling. YA literature had come to claim me and I have been its loyal subject ever since. From then on while I continued to explore the middle grade section  of the library I slowly transitioned to the teen section.

Fast forward to today and I have graduated to book dragon status. I have never regretting picking up the Junie B. series and it will forever be known as the series that got me reading. Thank you, Barbara Park. If you ask me now, reading is my new favourite hobby, pass time, and job. Reading truly changed my life for the better. It enriched my imagination and showed me worlds that I could explore and learn from.

Well, that is how the journey started. How I evolved into the person I am today, into the reader I am today. I gush inside every time I think about the gift of reading. I sadden at the thought that some cannot read or chooses not to. It’s a GIFT people, cherish it.

That is all for today. I hope you enjoyed this little story of myself. Next week I will be sharing some of my Favourites (books, movies, genres, etc.) so stay tuned.

Happy Reading!

-Rendz