My name is Andrew and I'm a bibliophile.

I love books; love may not even be a strong enough word for the feeling. If I could marry books, I'd become a Mormon and wed many. Looking back throughout my life, I've tried to find what spurred my insatiable hunger for stories. Maybe I just need a Snickers bar, but for now the words will do.

Growing up, my mother made books a regular part of my life. When I was very young, my mother would read to me every night. I remember sitting down with her and poring over the pages of "Frog and Toad" or "Stone Soup." Dr. Seuss even came over every now and then. I loved it. I made my mother read the same books to me over and over again. She was wonderful and always did. I think she can still recite some from memory.

Reading books took me to another world. My mother would always tell me that books could take me anywhere. I could be anything I wanted to be in books. When I was younger, I never understood what she meant by this. I thought I could only be what was in the story but, looking back, I began to realize she was showing me that imagination is important.

The older I got, the more I read with my mother. I remember reading "The Mouse and the Motorcycle" and "Wayside School is Falling Down." I think I really lucked out with the Harry Potter series getting released in 1998. I was 9 years old. This fantastic book was insanely popular at school. Reading it was fun, since everyone was talking about it. I read it with my mother and we talked about it. Our discussions made reading even more fun.

After finishing the first Harry Potter and impatiently waiting for the other Potter books to come out, my mother read "The Hobbit" to me. She bought two copies of the book, one for me and one for her, and read it out loud. She did different voices for each character and really kept me interested.

Once I hit eighth grade, my mother bought us copies of "To Kill A Mockingbird." We read the book together over the summer, but this time on our own. I continued reading in order to talk about the book with her.

I attribute a lot of who I am and my passion as an aspiring fiction writer, besides being a journalist, to my mother. She instilled a love of reading into me by showing me the joys involved.

Today it's difficult to get kids interested in reading. I'm not sure what's to blame. Obviously the interest in the stories is still present. Movies such as "The Hunger Games," "Divergent" and "The Fault in our Stars" make this quite apparent. Books have been made into movies for a long time, which means I can't blame the movie business. Instead I think it's the adults around the children.

My mother took the time out to sit and read with me often. I'm not saying if parents don't read to their children they're bad parents. But children need someone to read to them. Besides my mother, many teachers helped cultivate my love of reading.

Even if it's just 10 minutes of your day, read something from a book or read a book to a child. It will make you feel good, let you escape from the pressures of life and I'm sure you'll like the look on the kids face when something amazing happens in the story.

I think Stephen King said it best in his memoir "On Writing," when he wrote, "Books are a uniquely portable magic."

Why not become a wizard today?

Andrew Mark

editorial assistant

Whitehall-Coplay Press

Northampton Press

Catasauqua Press