How to love reading

I challenge you to think back…

You are now in 3rd grade,

You do not know who Shakespeare is, nor Jane Austen or Earnest Hemmingway 

You have not been taught to hate, 

There is no set in which you have to fall

You are sheer energy and optimism and life

And you have finished your test early.

You wait four mind-numbing minutes, hoping your friend will finish as well

Maybe you can play rock-paper-scissors across the room

But no

Finally you turn to the colorful book shelves,

 And brace for history, and math and science, 

But

There is a book on the shelf, a soft paperback with a broken spine,

 not large enough to intimate

And on the cover is a sword

And in that book you find adventure and love and loss

Life

You take it home

And you read it again and again and again 

And think surely this most exciting book ever,  the best book known to man, the only book i will ever read 

the exception

But then your class visits the library 

And there are more books with swords and ships and dragons on the cover

But also books with little boys on the cover

Boys who look like you 

And you take those too

And you read