Thank You Thank You!

Thanks for coming and checking out my site, this week, yesterday to be exact, I surpassed the 20,000 hits mark.  I know in the world of websites this is not much at all, but I have at least one visitor a day and I’m so happy with that!  I started this blog mainly for myself, but kept it public hoping that people would find it useful.  I truly hope you do.  I am on vacation now, but will be doing some sort of giveaway when I get home in celebration of this milestone so keep checking back!  I’d also love to hear any feedback.  I know I haven’t posted a review in awhile, but that’s about to change.  A review of Jennifer Brown’s Perfect Escape is coming up tomorrow!

 

Thanks again for reading!

Who Am I?

While I work on a review or two for you all I thought I’d let my readers know a little more about me.  Here’s a little insight into who I am and how I got here.  There will be follow up posts coming in the next few weeks.  Also I updated the “About this Blog” page.  Enjoy!

In elementary school I went through two brief phases of wanting to be a movie star and the President of the United States, but after having one amazing teacher after another I decided, at a young age, that I wanted to be like them.  Starting with Mrs. Pine in Kindergarten and moving straight through to Mr. D (1st grade), Ms. Vivolo (2nd grade) and so on I was lucky enough to have a string of extremely talented teachers who I held the utmost respect for.  In fact, I still stay in contact with many of them today.

I credit Ms. Vivolo in second grade for inspiring my love of literature.  She had us record ourselves on tape reading aloud while we practiced using inflection to portray the meaning and feelings behind the words that we were saying.  And, perhaps more importantly, for me at least, she held a contest.  As a somewhat competitive person by nature this appealed greatly to me.  Over spring break in 1992 we were to read as many books as possible.  I took this challenge and ran with it, and while I’ve since forgotten how many books I read, I won and got to go to Taco Bell for lunch with a teacher.

That, is where it all started.  A love of my teachers and a love of reading set me on the path to where I am today.  I owe a lot to the teacher’s of Taft Elementary school in Lakewood, OH.  For, while I had great teachers throughout my schooling, they were the ones that planted the seed, and I am grateful for it.