Versatile Blogger Award!

Lovely Anne, a high school librarian and writer of the blog, My Head Is Full of Books, awarded me The Versatile Blogger Award last week!  Thank you, Anne - I very much appreciate the award!  Please stop by and visit her wonderful blog with lots of great book reviews for teens, YA, and grown-ups, too (hence her own versatility!).

Here are the rules for this award:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason! (In no particular order...)
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

(Note: As many of you know, I have a chronic illness and have limited energy/time for blogging, so I'm only going to pass this along to 5 other bloggers.  If I don't limit myself a bit, I wouldn't be able to accept awards at all, so I hope you understand.)

Now, 7 things about myself.  Since this is a kids/teens book blog, I'll try to focus on those areas of my life:

1. My Mom taught me to read before I started kindergarten (thanks, Mom!) - Go, Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman was the first book I read on my own, and it is still a favorite of mine and my own kids.  There is an awesome photo of me reading The Cat In the Hat while sitting on my potty seat (obviously, even earlier) - I wish I could share that with you, but I think my Mom has it.  Suffice it to say, I have always loved books!
2. I was a huge fan of both Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden when I was a kid.  A friend and I used to pretend to be Trixie and Honey, but we could never find any good mysteries in our neighborhood.
3. My all-time favorite series as a kid was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle and its sequels.  I even got to play Meg in our 3rd grade play!
4. I went on a Ray Bradbury binge in high school and read every single Bradbury book in our public library.  Oddly, I haven't read any Bradbury since then.  I really want to revisit his books.
5. Besides Bradbury, as a teen I began to read more and more books from the adult section of the library, though I still liked some teen books.  There really wasn't as much YA variety back then as there is now.  My Mom, Dad, and I read every single Stephen King book that came out - we just passed them between the three of us.
6. I joined a book group about 7 years ago with a group of friends and was stunned by the wonderful variety of books we read!  I rediscovered reading at that point in many ways.  That group disbanded, but I now belong to two other book groups - one in my neighborhood and another at a local Unitarian church (but it's not a religious book group - just regular books) and I sometimes attend a third at my local library if I can squeeze it in.  Book groups have introduced me to so many genres of books that I never would have tried otherwise!
7. I'm a freelance writer, and in addition to my book blog, I write reviews of books and other media for Family Fun magazine.  Lots of fun and my kids love being testers!

Now, I'd like to pass this award onto the following well-deserved and versatile blogs (no one said they had to be book blogs, so I've included a variety here):

• Stephanie at Curling Up By the Fire (books)
• Jan at Eating YA Books (books)
• Dalia at Generation X Mom (Dalia posts wonderfully thought-provoking issues and questions about parenting)
• Julie at My Book Retreat (books)
• Peryl at Parenting Ad Absurdum (Peryl writes hilarious and heartwarming posts about being a parent)

So, please stop by and visit these very worthy blogs.
(And awardees:  no pressure if you can't meet all the requirements listed above!  Feel free to just bask in the glory of accepting an award.)