How ‘80s & ‘90s Kids Learned to Love Reading

Baltimore street librarian Araba Maze recently posted a video where she surprised a group of young children with a visit from the author Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) and noted how “book joy opens doors to reading.”

The children’s excitement is contagious and it left me thinking about my own bookish childhood.

Whenever I’ve been asked what made me a reader, an image of the environment I grew up in melds together: my parents are educators, my abuelo was a writer, my abuela was a reader, my school had a library and librarian, and I always had access to books. But those things were constants, like quiet background noise that I never had to think about. Maze’s video reminded me of specific moments of book joy in my childhood, which it turns out helped shape ‘80s and ‘90s kids into lifelong readers.

Teddy Ruxpin

Teddy Ruxpin immediately became my best friend when I unwrapped him on Christmas morning in 1985. He was big, and heavy, and he read his books to me (if I placed the matching cassette tape in his back). My excitement over him could not be contained.

It has been 40 years since I first learned the song “Two Hands Are Better Than One”, from the book The Story of the Faded Fobs, and I can still sing it. That’s how many times I played my Teddy Ruxpin’s book tapes.

As an adult I learned the behind-the-scenes story of how Teddy Ruxpin was created (including malfunction issues) and have also heard stories of kids who were terrified of the talking bear (How? He is friend shaped!). If mine ever got replaced I don’t remember it, what I do remember is having a companion for years that never lost the magical feeling of a bear reading to me.

It’s clear now that Teddy Ruxpin was my first audiobook, and certainly played a role in me growing up to be a huge fan of the format. For that alone I owe him a debt of gratitude.

The nostalgia train came through in 2017 when Wicked Cool Toys relaunched Teddy Ruxpin with a new design but in 2019 WCT was acquired by Jazwares.

Pizza Hut’s BOOK IT!

This is one of those reading encouragement programs that I am super confident would be as popular with adults as it is with children.

The incentive was huge: you won a personal pan pizza if you met the reading goals assigned to you by your teacher. That’s it. Read and get pizza.

Up until this was introduced in my elementary school, any teacher assigned reading only resulted in being given a grade. So this reading “challenge” added an element of pure joy since it ended with me strutting into Pizza Hut with a coupon for my very own pizza!

The program was so popular that Small Wonder (one of my favorite childhood TV shows) had an entire episode focused on the challenge, which starts with a kid who hasn’t finished his reading getting threatened by another kid because the class wants their pizza party.

40 years later the Pizza Hut logo immediately fills me with a positive feeling, so it also worked out tremendously for them via marketing. And the program still exists with offers for homeschool teachers, parents, and schools. There is also an app now.

Scholastic Book Fair

“I've spent my whole adult life chasing the high of a scholastic book fair” may be the truest Tweet ever tweeted.

When the Scholastic Book Fair came to my school it was an event. Like a field trip you were super excited about, except it came to you. There were a lot of books and tchotchkes on display and the school librarian, along with volunteer parents and teachers, helped you figure out how much you could really buy based on the money your parents had given you. It was equivalent to the feeling of coming home with a bag full of candy after trick or treating.

The Scholastic Book Fair still exists, and a few years ago it made headlines thanks to a partnership with Abbott Elementary: “ABC has partnered with Scholastic to become the first entertainment brand to provide underfunded schools with free book fairs.”

These bookish moments of joy were created, and existed, during the many panics of the ‘80s along with a wave of book censorship, which was at its highest until recent years.

I look around now and see Little Free Libraries, radical street librarians like Araba Maze, anti-censorship activists like Kelly Jensen, The Ruby Hill Boyz—and I’m heartened that so many adults are working tirelessly to improve literacy, create access to books, and to make moments of book joy for children.

May every kid grow up feeling the unfettered joy that can come from a bookish moment.