The Book That Inspired Me to Write: Where It All Started

I came across the book that inspired me to write the other day...

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein.

And standing there, in the middle of the aisle, I didn’t expect what it would do to me.

Because for some people, this book is just a collection of poems. For others, it’s controversial—challenged and even banned over the years for being “too dark,” too rebellious, too honest about things children aren’t always meant to question.

It’s been criticized for encouraging disobedience, for touching on death, for holding humor that doesn’t always behave.

But for me?

It was the beginning of everything.

Not Sweet Valley High.

Not The Babysitters Club.

Not even Harry Potter.

Those stories never reached me.

They never even interested me.

This was the book that made me fall in love with reading.

This was the book that inspired me to write.

The one that made me realize stories could feel different—strange, emotional, a little wild… and still mean something.

As I stood there holding it again, decades later, I felt it—

That younger version of me. The girl who always had her nose in a book.

At cafés.

At sleepovers.

On the beach.

Even walking through high school hallways.

Reading wasn’t just something I did.

It was where I lived.

So of course… I bought it.

And now it sits on my shelf—

Not just as a book,

but as a quiet reminder.

Of where I started.

Of the girl who needed stories.

Of how I somehow became the person who now writes them.

And every time I see it…

I smile.