A reading journey rooted in scary stories: Simone Moore | My Bookmark

Simone Moore (she/her) is Reading Partners’ senior program operations manager. Her first memory connected to reading happened when she was in preschool. Her class was celebrating Halloween, and her teacher was reading the book In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz. It was Simone’s first time hearing a scary story. 

Her teacher was reading a story called The Teeth about a kid who encounters people on the street with teeth that get larger and larger until he finally decides to run home out of fear. 

“The story and the illustrations freaked me out so much that I ran to the bathroom to take a break, but I believe this moment sparked my love of horror literature,” Simone says.

Another book she remembers vividly was Please, Baby, Please by Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee, which her mother would read to her before bedtime. 

“I would beg her to read it over and over because I adored how expressively she read the words,” Simone says. “The structure of the story was similar to No, David, but the illustrations were more realistic and relatable to me, and the use of “please” paired with the depictions of the child conveyed a more nurturing message than an authoritarian disciplinary one. When I read the story now as an adult, I still feel the warmth and love I felt hearing the story as a child.”

Since The Teeth and Please, Baby, Please, Simone’s reading journey has evolved in certain ways, but stayed similar in other ways. 

“I still read for a lot of the same reasons that I did as a young child,” Simone says. “I used books as a way to escape, connect to my feelings in a different way, or explore other worlds, ideas, and communities whether they be real or fictitious, and I continue to select books to read for these reasons.”

“The major change is that I see some books as tools to help me improve myself or change the way I consider and engage with the world around me. I am drawn to horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and historical fiction as much as I am drawn to essays and nonfiction works about science, politics, history, social justice, and art.”

When she thinks about books she wishes she could have read as a child, titles that are LGBQT+ friendly and featured by Pride and Less Prejudice come to mind.

“I would have loved to know more about queer historical figures and have had the vocabulary to accurately understand and describe the internal experiences I was having because the adults in my life were not able to do so,” Simone says. “I feel like these types of books would have also equipped the adults in my life to facilitate such conversations with more empathy, knowledge, and foresight.”

Simone believes that books can play a powerful role in the lives of young students today. Reading can “open them up to a variety of thoughts and experiences when the texts they explore are diverse. This can help them build empathy and tolerance, and equip them with the knowledge to build meaningful relationships with people who have both shared and different backgrounds.”