What first kindled your love of reading? Was it a specific book? A genre or author you kept gravitating toward? The joys of escaping into another world? For me, it was Smurfs. No, it wasn’t books about the little, blue, human-like creatures who lived in mushroom houses in the middle of a forest, but the actual figurines themselves.

When I was in the third grade, unbeknownst to me, my sequencing skills weren’t great and, according to my teacher, I was having difficulty with our classroom reading assignments. My mom, trained in the field of special education, harnessed my love of Smurf figurines and turned them into a reading reward.

I don’t exactly remember how the whole process started, nor the specific details. But if I read a short chapter book, I’d receive a regular Smurf. If I read a longer book, she’d buy me a Super Smurf, which was even cooler in my young eyes. A Super Smurf was a figurine that came with accessories.

As my collection grew, Mom purchased the display cases they had in toy stores. It wasn’t long before I had filled two of the spinning tower cases and one Super Smurf Collectors Center. About sixty percent of my collection were the regular figurines, and forty percent, the Super Smurfs. (I knew which side my bread was buttered on: shorter books equaled more frequent rewards.) But Mom was right. As the collection grew, so did my love of reading. And from that love came my calling to write.

To this day, I still have my Smurf collection. All 300 and something figurines. They followed me from my third-grade class in to Louisiana to Kentucky and later to Florida. I wanted to finally pass them on to others when I downsized from my house in Florida to an apartment in Colorado. But Mom wouldn’t let me, saying they were a part of my history. So they sit in her storage locker, most in the cases and a few in boxes and bags.

Do you know what else I still have? A deep love of reading. And while I now have specific genres I gravitate toward, specific books I love and re-read regularly (looking at you Pride & Prejudice), and still enjoy escaping into other worlds, all of those realities link back to a simple reward system started by my mom and my concerned third-grade teacher.

 

Felicia achieved master’s degrees in Healthcare Administration and Speech-Language Pathology, but has written since childhood and dreamed of authoring books that teach and inspire others. An award-winning fiction and non-fiction freelance writer, she has published several devotions and sweet romance short stories. Her passion, however, is writing women’s fiction and romantic suspense with strong female characters who work through their traumas and tragedies using biblical principles and counseling techniques. When she’s not glued to her laptop, Felicia enjoys hiking, meandering with her thirteen-year-old Frenchie, and looking forward to the next story. Find out more at Felicia’s BRRC Author page or her website.