Author Mary Pope Osborne talks about first books: “In high school, I wouldn’t have survived without reading.”

A new video from a powerful advocate for reading. We’ve written about the children’s author, Mary Pope Osborne, before here. She is the author of the Magic Tree House series, which has sold more than 100 million copies and been translated into 30 languages – success by any standards. The series has been awarded by the National Council of Teachers of English, the American Booksellers Association, and she also received the Ludington Memorial Award from the Educational Paperback Association and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Random House Sales Force.

In the video, she’s discusses the first books that form a bridge into the rest of your life. “I feel like the first books are some of the most important things that fall into your lap in your life. And you have to treasure them for what they did for you. …They were eye-opening and stayed with me. To this day, I can recreate the thrill I had when I first heard them, when I was just three or four years old. In high school, I wouldn’t have survived without reading.”

Full video “The Magic of Reading” here. It’s short. Three minutes. (Hat tip to Paul Caringella)

Author: Cynthia Haven

Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year. Join me at twitter: @chaven View all posts by Cynthia Haven