I have always loved reading books. I have read books since I was a toddler. Every book that I read as a child helped turn me into the person that I am today.  These are the six books that played the biggest part in my life.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Out of every book that I read when I was younger, this one was my favorite. I am sure every one of my family members have this book memorized because of how many times I made them read it to me. Because of this book, whenever I was in the car going down the road I would point out everything I saw. I did this until I was about seven years old. Sometimes I still do this.

Goodnight Moon

This was a book I had my mom read to me just about every night. I loved this book so much that I ate it. Twice. This was the best bedtime story to me as a kid. It had me saying good night to almost every object in my room for about five years. This book taught me to say goodnight to everyone and everything.

Fancy Nancy

Nancy was everything I wanted to be. She had everything nice. She wore fancy clothes, played with fancy toys, and used fancy words. This book is where my obsession with Paris came from. These books had me saying “Oh La La” almost everyday. After reading these books, I would beg my mom to get all the fancy stuff in the store so I could be like Nancy, but I later realized that I was just going to get the cheap stuff and be store-brand Nancy.

Pinkalicious

My favorite color when I was little was pink. It still is today. My favorite color will always be pink. This is why I loved Pinkalicious. Everything that she owned was pink, she only wore pink, and in one book I remember everything she ate was pink. These books helped fuel my obsession with pink and I believe that if I did not read these books then I would not love pink as much as I do.

A Series of Unfortunate Events 

I started reading this series of books when I was in fifth grade, and I quickly became obsessed with them. These books were truly a series of unfortunate events. It felt like those kids could just just never catch a break. My love of mysteries stemmed from these books. I always tried to tie my hair up with a ribbon, but I soon realized that my thick, curly hair was not able to do that.

Llama Llama

The Llama Llama books showcased a boy’s relationship with his mother. While I could not relate to the llama boy in the sense of having a single mother, I could relate to him in the sense that I too have a close relationship with my mother. As I got older I realized that maybe I related to Llama because I too sometimes struggle with anxiety when my mom is not around.

These are all the books that I grew up loving and helped me shape into a person. I encourage everyone to look back on their childhood and ask themselves “What books made me?”