The Bloggers’ Alliance of Nonfiction Devotees topic for this month is:
How did you get into nonfiction? Do you remember your first nonfiction book or subject? If so, do you still read those subjects?
Who: Unruly What: got hooked on nonfiction Where: in small town Iowa When: in 3rd grade Why: because of biographies.
Yes, biography was the gateway, and I remember it vividly.
First, there were the biographies of the Presidents and First Ladies. There’re whole sets of biographies of all of them, written just for kids, and I just may have read them all. (Type A 3rd grader? Yes.)
Beginning that year, anything that was a biography—I would read it.
Yes, I’m talking biographies of Evel Knievel, Harriet Tubman, Leif Garrett (though that was serious research, because I intended to marry him), Eli Whitney, Amelia Earhart, Thomas Edison, and Barry Manilow.
This biography thing has stuck. I’ve branched out into other nonfiction reading, but the biographies maintain their stronghold. Of the nonfiction books I own (because I can’t live without them—that’s my criterion for book-buying) the biggest category is biography.
You know how they say that looking at a child at age 7 is the best predictor of the adult that child will become? Well, a wide swath of the reading I do now is freakishly similar to the stuff I was reading way back at age 9 or so: biographies of presidents, aviators, and the occasional celebrity.
We’re gonna hope that’s because the die was cast and I am who I am. (Either that, or I’m just stuck at age 9 for life. Though I have gone off Leif Garrett. Sorry, Leif. I had to go and change on you.)

14 thoughts on “BAND August Discussion”
Comments are closed.