Ada Limón on Reading Ray Bradbury in High School

For Teacher Appreciation Week, Joumana Khatib at The New York Times asked writers about the books they were recommended to read by their teachers. Poet Ada Limón was given Ray Bradbury‘s The October Country by her high school English teacher. “I had never read stories like this,” Limon says. “The sense of surprise. The distrust of human beings. How the enemy could be the wind or a crowd, or how a farmer could be forced to cut wheat that isn’t wheat at all with his giant scythe. I also learned the word scythe! It was just weird enough for me at 13. Just forbidden enough. Just dark and morbid enough to keep my interest. I still think about those short stories, their strange and eerie turns, how it gave the world another magical (and creepy) possibility.”