Blog / 2019 / Literacy = Love

This is where reading started for me. My father used McGuffey’s Readers to teach me, and these books’s titles as well as their cover designs are seared into my memory as markers of an important milestone. That said, thirty years later, I admit that I don’t remember any of the text.

Truthfully, the thing that sticks with me most about the readers is this cake. Because my Papa may have taught me to read, but it’s my Maman who showed me how to celebrate reading!

In a sense, the animal ABC book I am currently working on follows in the delicious footsteps of my mother’s cake. It’s my way of honoring literacy’s vital role in shaping who I am.

And speaking of the alphabet book, it has a name now: Baby Sees ABCs!

I haven’t done as much reading as usual since my last alphabet book update because I was riveted to the impeachment hearings. Today’s reading list includes the one book I finished this week as well as a novel that I have reread many times over the years:

• Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

  I almost stopped reading this book early on because of the bloodiness of the second chapter, but I’m glad I decided to stay with it. Set in a landscape of physical, environmental, systemic, and emotional violence, this story is really about healing.

• Kindred by Octavia Butler

  This is my very favorite book, and everything else by Butler is in the number two spot. Kindred tells of a 1970s era black woman who finds herself in the Antebellum South. This American classic should be required reading for every high schooler in the US.