Best Book Ever

Evan Pallor

When I was young, if I was asked what my favorite book was, I would probably say Harry Potter. As I grew older, I went through about twenty different favorite books. Around the time I started my sophomore year I was heavily into the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. I loved Pratchett’s style and his humor, I laughed out loud more often then I had done with any author before. My obsession with his books continued throughout the year, until one day I saw something magical. A unicorn Voldemort pikachu Ms. Diana kid in my English class was reading a book entitled Good Omens. I looked at the author’s name, and lo and behold it was co-authored by Terry Pratchett and another of my favorite authors Neil Gaiman. I asked the student (who shall remain nameless so as to prevent his cover being blown in his clandestine operation) if I could borrow the book when he finished it. He said yes, and two day later I first laid hands on the best book in the known universe. I took the book, I went home, I read it that night. Four hundred and twelve pages in one night. I could not put the book down. I returned the book to the anonymous donor, and spent the next couple months itching to re-read the book. Finally, for my birthday, I got a nook, and you can guess what the first book I bought was. I finally had a copy for myself, and I have been reading it ever since. The most times I ever read Good Omens in a week was five. That’s how much I love this book.

I suppose with my ranting and raving about Good Omens I have probably made you curious about the actual story of the book. It’s about angels, demons, heaven, and hell and why publishing true prophesies doesn’t make a profit. The main characters are a demon named Crowley and an angel named Aziraphale. They are both changed from their six thousand year stay on earth, becoming infernal / celestial beings of the world. When news of the birth of the Antichrist and the impending apocalypse arrives they both decide to try to stop it so they can partake in worldly pleasures for awhile longer. Meanwhile, due to an accidental baby swap, Adam the Antichrist is growing up quite untainted by either ethereal or infernal forces. Anathema Device, a psychic descendant of Agnes Nutter, the author of The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch which contains a completely accurate description of the events leading up to the apocolypse and Newton Pulsifer, witchfinder private and technological genius (not) are two other major characters. The entire story is an absolutely beautiful work of art.

I <3 Good Omens.

        

            The gaining of literacy is the most important part of a child’s development. With the coming of literacy the world opens up to the child. My journey was in two parts.

When I was very young my mother would read to me in the bathtub. I loved the stories she read to me, letting myself be swept away to the lands that were presented in these books. The first books I remember having read to me were the Redwall books. These books were about the adventures of walking, talking animals who killed each other and ate a lot. At the time, I was captivated by these stories. However these books were not the ones that would eventually have the most impact on my reading. In first grade I started to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone with my mom. This book opened my imagination to a world of magic and mystery in a way that nothing else had, and I wished it was real as I hadn’t with anything else (I was very disappointed on my eleventh birthday when I did not receive an owl with an invitation to Hogwarts). The Harry Potter books continued to cast their spell over me until the seventh book was released in 2007. The first books of the series helped me become fluent in the decoding and inscription of the hieroglyphs of the English languages. Both of these book series assisted in my journey to literacy.

The other part of my transition to literary sentience was the influence of my early teachers. In kindergarten I had a teacher who, to preserve anonymity, I shall call Ms. X. I hated Ms. X. I had troubles completing the exercises in writing that she set, and because I took longer than everyone else to finish them, she made me work on them into free time. As a five-year-old, this was quite emotionally scarring, slightly ridiculous though it may sound. I hated anything to do with the cursed letters she made me laboriously form, time after time, she refused to even listen, I wouldn’t mind, if I knew what I was missing. I found out precisely what it was that I was missing the next year. My teacher that year will be called Ms. N for the purposes of this blog. She was much younger than Ms. X, and much nicer too. She focused more on the reading portion of literacy, making me appreciate the value in the laborious formation of letters. Ms. N helped me understand the beauty and magic behind the etching of the alphabet, and the stories and history that would be unknown without them. Her teaching techniques were much more child-friendly than Ms. O’s house of horror classroom style. I actually went from being one of the worst readers in my grade to reading far above grade level in one year. Both of these teachers contributed in their own vastly different ways to my journey to literacy.

            Every literate child became literate in a different way. My journey began in the bathtub with my mother reading to me. The Harry Potter books were an essential aspect of this step in my journey. My kindergarten and first grade teachers were both imperative in the formation of my attitude towards literature, although fortunately first grade had a much greater effect. Altogether, my journey to literacy was not worthy of a page and a half of written material.