My earliest reading memory

I remember learning to read with dull stories about Jane going up a hill, but my earliest thrilling reading memories are of series like The Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High. In the highly gendered reading days of the 1980s, I knew those books were for girls, but I devoured them.

My favourite book growing up

Besides the girls of The Baby-Sitters Club, I loved books about survival and perseverance, especially Gary Paulsen’s The Island, in which a boy discovers a secluded island and ventures there to learn about the natural world.

The book that changed me as a teenager

When I was 16, I read Toni Morrison for the first time: The Bluest Eye and Sula and Song of Solomon in quick succession. Literature had always felt a little distant (and maybe even slightly dead) to me, but Morrison helped me see that books were vital and present.…