Grateful for The Little Vampire

I learned to read before my 4th birthday. No one pushed me to it, but it was a combination of being the youngest of four children and having curiosity to decode the letters into proper thoughts. Throughout my childhood I read children's books, but at one point I stopped reading almost entirely anything other than schoolwork. 

Nothing just seemed to interest me! My teacher was pushing me to choose a Moomin book from the school library and I read it, but only to please my teacher. As much as I loved the cartoons, the book wasn't speaking to me at all. Then somehow, I can't remember how or when, I was introduced to a translated book series by a German author Angela Sommer-Bodenburg about a little vampire. It wasn't long that I had read them all and I wanted more.

Image: pixabay.com

This book series, Pikku Vampyyri (Der kleine Vampir), was the nudge I needed to get into reading seriously. Comic books followed and when I was around 12, I read And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie and realized what a thrill a book could give me. It was followed by Anne Frank, which got me into reading about Jewish fates during the second world war. At 13 I read my first book on reincarnation, followed throughout the years by a random selection of books about psychology and philosophy. I went through all the books I could get my hands on by a Finnish writer Arto Paasilinna and have gotten occasionally into reading some detective books as well. I went through a period of reading poetry, too, where to this day I return every now and again.

Lately I read more articles, graphs and studies online, but some non-fiction books as well -- and occasionally some fiction. It all started from The Little Vampire and for that reason alone I am grateful for this book series, for it gave a beginning for a thirst for knowledge that made me who I am today.