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Aidan Huggins

Ms. Gonzalez

ENC 1101-0026

24 September 2023

Multimodal Paper

Reading and writing have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and I’ve

had many influential people teach me how to better my skills and make writing an extremely fun

hobby that I still like to participate in today. My first experience with literacy was when my

parents read me Dr. Seuss books in bed when I was only a couple years old. My favorite of his

were The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham and The Lorax, and I would regularly ask for

those two books to be read to me. I would look forward to the evenings and run home from

playing with my friends to eat dinner and get ready for bed just so my parents (usually my mom)

could read to me. Two of the most influential people in my writing career were my parents who

taught me the joys of books at a very young age, and my middle school librarian who helped me

discover my favorite genres, authors, and books that influence my style of writing now.

Around 2nd grade, my parents bought me a few books from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid

series from our elementary school’s Scholastic book fair, alongside Mary Pope Osbourne’s

Magic Treehouse series. Both series I would read and reread at home and at school, as I couldn’t

put them down. I eventually branched out to other series, but these two had the biggest impact as

they are the series that truly influenced my life the most. I originally wanted to read Diary of a

Wimpy Kid because it was the most popular book series in elementary school, and it would

always be at the book fair held every year. So, every year my parents would buy me the new

Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, alongside some other titles that I eventually wouldn’t read as often
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as Diary of a Wimpy Kid. My love for this series expanded to Lincoln Pierce’s Big Nate, and my

newfound love for comic books, which I still enjoy to this day. In fact, my love for comic books

expanded and transitioned to my eventual love of reading manga, which was the same exact

concept, except for more mature audiences. Magic Treehouse was the first “chapter book” series

I got into and thoroughly enjoyed, as usually I would only read books if they frequently had

pictures to accompany the text. I loved the fantasy and sci-fi aspect of the series, and it was also

interesting to read about different times in history, as the treehouse was a sort of time machine.

My brain loved learning about different random facts that I’d spill to my friends after finishing

each book. I’d always get the box sets that had 4 books and read through them in a week or two,

and I would usually reread each book. I owned roughly 20 or more books in the series over the

span of the 4 years I’d read them, vastly expanding my knowledge and vocabulary. I’d also

frequently have creative writing prompts at school, and I’d always write something fantasy

related inspired by Magic Treehouse. Deborah Brandt supports my story by stating, “[Sponsors]

lend their resources or credibility to the sponsored but also stand to gain benefits from their

success…” (4). My parents wanted me to be proficient in learning and gain a love of reading so

that I could become smarter at an earlier age and perform well in school. This meant them giving

me said resources to learn and read, with a goal of getting me farther ahead of other students.

When I started Middle School, I wanted to find new and different books to read, so I

traveled to our school’s library and asked the librarian if there were any interesting and fun

authors. When she asked what authors I had read before, I brought up a recent story I enjoyed

called I Funny by James Patterson, and she introduced me to the Maximum Ride series. I

instantly fell in love with his writing style and stories, and I wanted to write a similar story like

him. For years I’d dreamt about becoming a successful author while reading his stories,
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eventually drafting short novels that I would read to myself or use for a school assignment.

Maximum Ride was also a fantasy series, so almost all my “for fun” short novels were also

fantasy and usually had a similar plot to Maximum Ride. My librarian then introduced me to

another author that would inspire me further, Mike Lupica. He mainly wrote fictional football

books that involved “underdogs” pushing themselves and winning previously thought

unwinnable games. However, Lupica took these simple plots and made them extremely fun and

different enough to make each read incredibly fun and diverse. The books I enjoyed most were

Game Changers, The Underdogs, and Million Dollar Throw. All three stories were mostly

similar, but I remember how much fun they were to waste time with and read. These stories

inspired me to give myself a sort of style that I wanted to focus on and perfect, and it also

inspired me to work on my character depth and desire to create relatable and fun characters. Both

the Maximum Ride series and Mike Lupica books rekindled my love for reading I’d recently lost

due to my increasing love for gaming and hate for school mandated reading assignments that

were always accompanied with a two-page essay that had to be written over the summer.

Deborah Brandt thoroughly explains that sponsors of literacy are, “the figures who turned up

most typically in people's memories of literacy learning…Usually richer, more knowledgeable,

and more entrenched than the sponsored…” (4). My librarian was proficient on relevant and

great authors that anyone could enjoy, allowing them to give me the resources to experience

great story-telling and regain my love for reading that I’d previously lost, causing me to want to

write my own stories and dream of making it my future job or hobby I could continue for the rest

of my life. Without Patterson and Lupica, as well as my librarian, I wouldn’t go out of my way to

read books to this day, and I am forever thankful to them.

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Overall, I have always loved reading and writing, and my parents and middle

school librarian are the people that I thank most for that, as I don’t know how I’d be

today without their support as my sponsors. With my parents buying me books in

elementary school, my love for reading comic books, chapter books, and whatever Diary

of a Wimpy Kid counts as (I guess a picture book?). Once my love for reading slightly

dwindled with my hate of being forced to read books for school I never enjoyed, my

middle school librarian showed the wonderful stories written by Mike Lupica, as well as

the most influential series in my life, Maximum Ride. Maximum Ride is the main

inspiration for the types of stories I wrote back in middle school and the books I want to

write now and in the future. Without that inspiration, I would never want to be a creative

writer, and I would stay away from reading unless it was mandatory. I have so many

ideas I want to implement one day that excite me to no end, and I always think back that

it all started with the wonders of Dr. Seuss’ storytelling that I fell in love with since the

beginning.
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Works Cited

Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” Jstor.Org, National Council of Teachers of English,

May 1998, www.jstor.org/stable/358929.