Tag Archives: essay

Inspire a Passion for Reading

Posted on by

We all love to read. And as a Senior Girl Scout, deciding what to base my Gold Award project on was a no-brainer: reading. The Gold Award is the highest level of achievement in Girl Scouts—the equivalent of reaching Eagle Scout in Boy Scouts. For my project, I wanted to take my love of reading and expand the opportunities reading has for children. With the help of my take action team, I created children’s library programs that provided working parents with a free and safe place for their children after-school.

Through my project I was able to share my love of reading with kids from our community. I am so glad that I was able to use my passion to inspire others. I can say on behalf of all the volunteers who participated in my project that teaching children to read was an invaluable experience. Completing my Gold Award has taught me to be a thoughtful leader by listening to the ideas of others on my team. I also learned what it must be like for librarians and teachers to see the joy and understanding on a child’s face. It is truly incredible to be a part of their journey learning to read and experimenting with different genres and ways of reading.

Now that I have completed my project, I definitely recommend teens in our community to create their own ways of encouraging reading. Get creative! Maybe just by writing a blog about how you wish to promote reading, someone will be inspired to do the same. If we all share our experiences and our thoughts on the importance of reading, I am certain that we will have an impact in our community. Interview a teacher or a librarian—they are some of the best examples of how teaching children to read benefits them in the future. Research the facts showing the impact that reading has on the lives of children. Whether or not you choose to take action, I hope that my review of my experience will inspire others to join me encouraging reading. Together we can share our love of books with the people around us. But don’t forget to educate and inspire others to follow your lead!

I encourage you to think about ways you can use your love of reading to benefit others. Whether it’s on a local, national, or global level, your ideas can inspire and motivate people to take action. Please leave me a comment telling me what ideas you have for spreading the love of reading and some ways you think we can accomplish it together!

-Kelsey H.

To My Fellow Readers,

Posted on by
3

Don’t you hate it when you have an infinite reading list because you know you will never finish it? No matter how much you read, how many books you cross off, more are always added. Your love for books keeps growing and there is no way to make it stop. So you add book after book of everything you want to read, hoping someday you will get to read them all. Even those books that you never really got around to, the ones you may have lost interest in. They are still there, on your list, waiting to be read by you. And those old books still sitting in your shelves, the ones piled in high stacks on your floor. No matter how many books you own or how many times you say you will read them, you always find a new one that draws your attention. But we do still try to make it back to the ones that were forgotten. We always try to read as much as we can, whenever we can.

Reading can be a pastime or an obsession. For me, I obsess over books. I always read one right after the other, trying to finish that long lasting list of mine. I may never finish it but I love to try. Because reading is knowledge. It’s emotional. It’s calming or disturbing, but a good book always makes you feel something. Whether it’s joy or despair or heartbreak or liberation. In the end it’s just words on a page, and it can change everything.

tumblr_inline_ni8tuvORYO1rxr4x6

Books that Inspire

Posted on by
3
notebook_thislyrelark

photo by flickr user derya

I figured that this month I wanted to write about something different than a book review. This month, I’m going to write about a book that I’m writing, and about the books which inspired my story ideas.I haven’t come up with a decent title yet, but I just finished the thirteenth chapter a few days ago. I started writing this story when I was in third grade because of a school assignment, but then I got carried away and my story was more than 500 words. Ever since then I wanted to finish the book, so I would work on it whenever I could in between my busy schedule.

Basically, this story has an action-packed, adventurous story line: An evil villain wants to take over the world and only a team of military special ops guys can stop him. They go on epic adventures including fighting ninjas next to a bottomless pit, and escaping a scout’s old military commander in a broken down, deserted city.

After I started writing and got a bunch of ideas out of my head, I realized that in most of the books that I read I always wanted to add something from my own imagination. Books have inspired me to continue writing my own story.

For example, I read a Marvel comic book that talked about invasions of aliens and super human powers. I thought these ideas would be cool to put into my story. When I read a Hardy Boys mystery book, I was inspired to put some mystery into my story. An Indiana Jones book inspired me to put some high-flying action into my book, too. I think that a little bit of everything in a story creates an amazing plot!

To sum it all up, when you mix different types of books with your own imagination, you can make anything come to life on the page. If you have ever been inspired to write because of a book you read, make a post in the comments about that inspiration.

-Kyle H., 7th grade