Book Your Stocking 2023 with John Kenny

On this year's Book Your Stocking, readers are sharing children's books from their past or present. Perhaps you'll stumble upon readers who read the same books as you, or will remember books important to your own childhood. Should the book find its way into a stocking near you, all the better.

Please welcome writer, editor, and teacher John Kenny from Dublin, Ireland.

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Through the Reading Glass as an Adult

by John Kenny

My main obsession as a child was with comics. My 'education' at a Christian Brothers school here in Dublin, Ireland turned me off books, so it was only as an adult that I started to dip my toes into the world of literature. I've since read a number of children's classics, several of which I loved: Peter Pan, Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill, Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. 

Perhaps it's an obvious choice, but my absolute favourites have to be the two Alice in Wonderland books. As a parent, I had the privilege of reading to my two daughters. They would sit on each side of me on the bed and I would read the next chapter of whatever book they had picked before they went to sleep for the night. It was a magical few years, a total delight for me. 

I think one of their favourites, and mine, was the Spiderwick Chronicles, which we all loved. It was a bittersweet moment when they got a little older and finally said to me, 'It's okay, Dad, we can read on our own now.'

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About John Kenny: John is an avid reader, writer, and for many years served as editor of the Dublin science-fiction and fantasy magazine Albedo One. He teaches writing workshops in Dublin and writes about books and more at his website https://johnrichardkenny.com/

John Kenny, Writer