I like to think that my life changed forever in third grade.

This was the first year that I actively remember falling in love with reading. I started with the usual choices: the pioneering and brave world of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the fantastic and imaginative world of Redwall and the all at once tragic and magical life of James with his giant peach.

I learned valuable lessons from these “teachers" while I voraciously read in the winged armchair in my childhood living room for hours at a time. I realized that the words were not just block letters printed onto white paper; they were a world someone had decided to share with me. I could not think of anything more personal and selfless to give to another person than your own words. I grew into a passionate reader and retreated into their worlds as a way to take a pause from mine.

As I got older the subjects became more serious and the messages more profound. Gone were the days of talking animals, castles, and valiant battles with a clear line between right and wrong. Just as my life was venturing into the shades of gray the stories followed suit. I had read hundreds of books by the sixth grade, but one had not yet stuck out as my “favorite" book. Then I found it.

I bought To Kill A Mockingbird for a mere $7 or $8. It was a small paperback copy that seemed very inconspicuous at the time. It did not have flashy typography or a bright, eye-catching cover that begged me to buy it. I read it in a probably a week. I truly believe that week changed my viewpoint of the world. I was growing up and entering the teenage stage of my life. I was becoming more socially aware of both myself and other people and how they viewed me. The vague tug Jem felt pulling him away from his childhood was a constant presence in my life as my sister and I tried to cross that bridge from childhood to ambiguous adolescence without losing our innocence and lightheartedness.

While reading To Kill a Mockingbird I was confronted with the innocence of Jem and Scout and then experienced with them the harsh reality of life and how people can blind themselves with prejudice and hate. I saw this through the eyes of the Finch kids and also through my own young eyes. I cried for the Robinson family, for the Finches' and for the fact that life was still ruled by attitudes and ideas that kept our minds as small as the town of Maycomb. This was the first book that really made me connect my world with the world in a book. This is also the only book I read every year.

Each year I re-read it something new jumps out to me and connects the world of 1930's Alabama to my current life. This can be in the triumphant moments of Boo Radley coming out of the shadows to reveal himself as the man who saved Jem's life or in the heart wrenching moment that Tom Robinson tried to climb to freedom with just one good arm pulling himself beyond his unjust imprisonment. The stories and motifs within To Kill a Mockingbird are still mirrored and paralleled in our world today.

I am not just talking about the obvious references such as the unrest and tragedies in Ferguson, New York, or Baltimore. These are all known events in our day and time. I am also speaking about the more subtle issues within the story line: addiction and dependence on narcotics, a misunderstanding of mental illness or behavior different from the norm, or the loss of childhood due to outside circumstances forcing children to act like adults.

All of these are real problems in our world today. I see that now and look to books still to guide the unknowns of life in an attempt to answer one question. Why. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do the young always go first? Why do the people with everything throw it away?

These are the kinds of questions I seek to explain away within the pages of books. Writers, after all, are just people trying to answer those same questions in their world of words.

So when I feel like my life is moving faster than I gave it permission to or that it is not going the way I planned I look to words. I find an escape in another world that offers an explanation, or at least an attempt at one, as to why this life doesn't follow that childhood story of morals being black or white, no gray.

I know that as I continue to experience novel moments in my life I will always be able to turn the page of a crisp new bestseller or flip through the worn, yellowed pages of an old favorite to find that joy in falling into a world of words.