How The Sweet Valley Twins Made Me the Richest Kid on the Block

I got my first job when I was eight.

I know what you’re thinking. Late bloomer.

But it was about that time in my life when I started to realize that I needed things, and things cost money. I went to my parents. My weekly allowance wasn’t going to cut it. What could I do, I asked, to make some more cash? The cold hard kind, preferably. Eight year olds need bank.

They thought on it and came back to me with a proposal. Cash for books, they offered.  That was the plan I agreed to.

For every chapter book I read, they would pay me one dollar. For a biography, three dollars and if I went all out and read a classic from the list they provided, I would earn a whopping five dollars per book.

I figured out fairly quickly that the classics were pretty slow going for a third grader and after one or two, flipped the script and started blowing through chapter books like gangbusters. Sweet Valley Twins and The Babysitter’s Club were my favorites, with the odd Apple Paperback sneaking in on occasion. These things were like crack to me and I lost myself daily in their trials and tribulations of finding homes for lost dogs, getting to know the mysterious new kid at school, or figuring out who could take the Thursday afternoon babysitting gig. While these books were infinitely more entertaining, they sadly didn’t pay as well.

I finally settled comfortably into the land of biography, reading about Betsy Ross, Jim Thorpe, Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, George Washington Carver, and so many, many more.  This was best of both worlds. Lucrative and interesting. I read a zillion of these things and never once cheated.

This went on for a couple of years. I’m not sure how the deal officially ended. Probably, I just aged out of it, as I don’t think there was a formal pronouncement. At one point, however, I kept reading and they stopped paying.

But it was too late. I was hooked. I would never again be the same or return to a state of non-reading. A book junkie, if you will, was born.

When I tell this story to others, it’s pretty typical that I’m met with a judgmental stare or a series of questions that somehow insinuate paying a child for reading sends the wrong message. They feel reading should be appreciated for it’s intrinsic value, and not considered a “chore,” or something that requires an outside reward.

These people are wrong. My parents were geniuses as far as I’m concerned. I internally thank them daily for the gift they’ve instilled in me. Not a night goes by that I don’t read and I look forward to it all day until it happens. When I have an afternoon free, I know how I want to spend it. I often wonder how many avid readers are out there and just don’t know it. They never worked reading into their daily life or routine and are thereby missing out.

I don’t have any kids, but when I do, I know a great way they can earn some money. Let the controversy commence. I’ll be too busy reading to notice.

Coming Up:

Women’s Week is on the way.  I’ll be reading, signing and participating in panel discussions on Thursday and Friday (October 11th and 12th) in Provincetown to usher Heart Block into the world.  Oh, and Thursday night is the Bold Strokes cocktail gathering for authors and readers. You should come so we can hang out. I’ll even tell you a joke.

9 Comments

rebekah weatherspoon

I was a member of the Baby-Sitters Club book club. it was amazing. BTW my mom used to pay me for A’s in Jr High. We were raised by super smart people 🙂

Reply
Carleen

Whatever encourages children to read is pure gold. While I didn’t get paid to read, I did get lots and lots of extra credit for it throughout Jr High and High School. Even though Mom signed all of the “really, she did read the book” slips I turned in, she still got a call once a year (each time I had a new teacher) asking for verification.

I agree…your parents were geniuses!

Reply
Devlyn Sixtyseven

Lucky you for getting payed to read such fabulous books, I was a fan of Sweet Valley High too. I am addicted to reading now and dont see how I could live without it.
Best wishes for your WW readings and have fun.

Reply
BestCrystal

I have noticed you don’t monetize your page, don’t waste
your traffic, you can earn extra cash every month because you’ve got hi quality content.
If you want to know how to make extra bucks, search for: Ercannou’s
essential adsense alternative

Reply
network marketing system

Hey I am so happy I found your blog page, I really found
you by error, while I was looking on Aol for something else, Anyhow I am here now and would just like
to say kudos for a fantastic post and a all round entertaining blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t have time to go through it all at the
moment but I have bookmarked it and also added your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read much more,
Please do keep up the fantastic job.

Reply
Mikki

Link exchange is nothing else but it is just placing
the other person’s webpage link on your page at appropriate place and
other person will also do similar in favor of you.

Reply
Reina

That is really fascinating, You are an excessively professional blogger.
I’ve joined your feed and sit up for in search of extra of
your magnificent post. Also, I have shared your site in my social networks

Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
http://www.melissabrayden.com/how-the-sweet-valley-twins-made-me-the-richest-kid-on-the-block/
www.melissabrayden.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2019-22
68655
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:EHPHBCUPP3MWSD7IZCNWREDYN5MJCJBY
<urn:uuid:982447fc-7323-47c6-a9c2-bbd8b5169c96>
2019-05-21T00:23:30Z
184.168.37.1
text/html
sha1:OAMUYGHEY3WDJNZNJNEN4OJSWQO354RN
<urn:uuid:f1acef49-9a69-432c-a05d-91b1df1e2a2d>
http://www.melissabrayden.com/how-the-sweet-valley-twins-made-me-the-richest-kid-on-the-block/
response
<urn:uuid:86900641-c357-4573-9e23-20f04d4d73d2>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2019-22
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for May 2019
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-138-146-130.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/