Most kids love the summer. Lots of time outside, no school, hanging around with your friends, hot weather, SUNSHINE, swimming. Nothing but time to do whatever you want. But what if you couldn't really go outside cause it was too sunny for your freckly skin (and it was so long ago that sunscreen hadn't really been invented). What if you loved school because it was the only thing you did really well? And what if you had just moved and you didn't know anybody in your new neighborhood? And what if you never really learned to swim because of the OUTSIDE thing again? What did you do then?
Well . . . I went to the library. We moved just about every couple of years when I was growing up - generally in the summer time, just after we had finished the school year. That meant I landed in a new town sometime in late June, when the weather was pretty hot, and most kids were spending a lot of their day down at the local pool. Sometimes I didn't even meet kids in the neighborhood I had moved into, because they would hit the pool early in the morning and leave sometime around dinnertime. Spending that much time outside in the sun would've been fatal to me - my mother said- would have KILLED ME. I would've ended up in the emergency room with a third degree burn. Or maybe turn to ash and disintegrate. And I was afraid of swimming, anyway. I was allowed to go to the pool after 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and pretend I knew how to swim for 45 minutes. Then I had to get out of the pool and come home. That pretty much left the entire day wide open for reading.
There weren't too many people in the library at 10 o'clock in the morning. Not too many kids to meet (they were at the pool). But it wasn't hot, I couldn't get sunburned, and no one seemed to mind if I read whatever I wanted. That was something I learned really quickly about reading, people were so pleased that you seemed like a quiet and studious kid, that they gave you a tremendous amount of leeway when it came to books. I could take out a whole bunch of Louisa May Alcott books, and then throw in a copy of Go Ask Alice, and the only thing the librarian would ask me was if I was sure I could read ten whole books before they were due in two weeks. And I could. I brought them home to my nice cool basement and I read through June, July, and August. I read mysteries, and science fiction, and literature, and romance novels. I sometimes read by author (when I found one I loved, like Pearl Buck) and sometimes I just picked a book because I liked the jacket cover. I read Dostoevsky, and Stephen King, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read Theodore Dreiser, and Judy Blume. I read whatever I could get my hands on, including a copy of Fear of Flying that I found in the top of my mother's closet. I didn't care what it was, I wanted to read it. That was who I was, a reader. I spent my summers inside a story.
I am still a reader. Reading calms me, centers me, helps me understand who I am in relation to the rest of the world. I read compulsively - once my husband found me sitting on the floor in front of a hotel room door - I had been looking through my bag for the room key, but found a magazine instead and so just sat down and started to read it. The other day, driving home on the Long Island Express, my husband was reading the New York Times in the passenger seat next to me and I found myself glancing over, desperate to read the article. It is a joke in my house that I read with absolutely no discretion, and at any time. I read all year long, not just the summer, but the summer is special because it reminds me always of who I am: a person who is happiest inside a story. When I grew up, I finally really learned how to swim, but I also learned that I am happiest in a book, not in the pool.
Editor's Note: Julianne Moore is an Emmy Award winning actress and the author of the Freckleface Strawberry Series.
And just like their mom, they are military children, too, so we move every 2-3 years. Books are one of their constants that never change and is always available to them no matter what. They love reading so much that sometimes their friends will chide them about it. But it's usually in fun and my kids know that their friends know that they really like their books. My oldest asked me just recently if I thought she was weird because she loves books so much and prefers the company of books over "hanging out" at the mall or the park like some of her friends do. I told her that it was just fine that she loves books the way she does and that the time to hang out with friends at the mall and think it's fun will come over time as she gets older (she's only 13 right now). I'm going to show her (and my other kids) this wonderful blog by Ms. Moore, so that my children can read for themselves that even celebraties like to read books and are normal just like they are! And just like in past summers and other breaks, we will be at the library checking out the wonderful world of books! 
