RIP E.L. Konigsburg

A tweet from John Green earlier this morning was the first news I heard of E.L. Konigsburg's passing.

This is incredibly sad news for me because E.L. Konigsburg is the author responsible for resurrecting my reading life.

On March 5th of last year I wrote a blog post on the Nerdy Book Club blog entitled "Returning Home to the Bookshelf." In that post I talk about how, as a child, I used to be a voracious reader but then high school ruined my love of reading by forcing me to read boring classics that bared little influence on my life or the life of my classmates.

From my Nerdy Book Club post:

But then one day when my husband and I were living in Germany, I found myself bored and tired of mindlessly surfing the Internet while my husband was at work, so I went over to the bookshelf, and picked up a book. I enjoyed that one so much, that I picked up another one a few weeks later. 

That first book I picked up was The View from Saturday. I still vividly remember finishing that book while delayed three hours in some random train station in Germany on our way back from a weekend trip to Prague. The name of the city where we were delayed escapes me, but sitting in that train station, book in hand, I was no longer in some Podunk train station in Germany; I was in Epiphany, New York with Noah, Nadia, Ethan, and Julian as they taught me a beautiful lesson about friendship. I am not ashamed to admit that this middle grade novel was, and still is, one of the most profound books I have ever read.

So thank you Elaine Lobl Konigsburg. Thank you for From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Silent to the Bone, The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, and The View from Saturday. Your memory lives on in the the children's (and adults') lives you have touched and will continue to touch through your stories.