Do you like to write poetry or to recite it? Today is a holiday reserved for your artistic skills; it’s “Great Poetry and Reading Day.”

From Langston Hughes to Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, these great poets interlaced their empowering words and vivid imaginations with great thought or philosophical thinking.

But these trailblazers and wordsmiths didn’t start out as icons. They started out in a classroom; they started with a book.

As the school year is nearing its end, the upcoming month of May is the perfect time to stop by your local library and check out a few titles. You can find the aforementioned writers and others such as Edgar Allen Poe, Kate Chopin (who wrote ‘Desiree’s Baby,’ a must read), Nikki Giovanni, Herman Melville and Dr. Seuss, nestled safely inside bookshelves. Many are just waiting for you to browse them.

When I was a child, I loved to read. I immersed myself in everything I could think of; from nonfiction to science fiction to inspirational or encyclopedias, books were so exciting to me. My favorites of course, were Weekly Readers or biographies on famous people or historical figures. I was always intrigued to see why the Kennedys were so prominent and distinguished or what it looked like during the civil rights era.

Books open up the mind to “new words and new worlds,” as my childhood pediatrician Dr. Patricia Robinson would say. Reading books at a young age help set students a part from their peers — widening vocabularies and strengthening mindsets.

Reading doesn’t have to be boring. Gone are the days where lengthy and verbose books are the norm. Thanks to advanced technology, books and journals can now be downloaded to a special device known as Kindle e-Reader or Nook. I recently bought a Kindle Fire to get back into the reading mode. So far so good.

I encourage all of you to visit the Selma-Dallas County Public Library throughout the month of May. The library offers thousands of titles for adults and children alike that are sure to keep you occupied. Nothing goes better with great weather than a good book.