Q&A with Youth Reporter Bella Kim on World Book Day
Planet Women’s Youth Ambassador & Reporter Bella Kim shares her favorite reads, love of nature and a recent essay on her love of books for World Book Day 2023!
Question: Say you’re organizing a panel discussion with all your favorite writers. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
Youth Ambassador Bella Kim: Chris Colfer, author of “The Land of Stories,” so he can answer the questions I have after reading his prequel series and I can pick his brain on how he created such a complex fairy tale world at such a young age. Amanda Gorman, so I can ask her how she turns her thoughts and experiences into cleverly beautiful poetry. The queen of mystery, Agatha Christie, so I can find out how she imagined 66 different staggering detective plots and if they made her need to sleep with all the lights on.
What is your ideal nature experience?
Bella: Recently, on an empty beach in Rancho Palo Verdes, CA, I lay on the sand for hours reading “Death on the Nile,” by Agatha Christie. The sky was a peaceful, cloudless blue, and the sun shone warmly down. The only sounds were birds and the waves crashing on the shore. This is one of my ideal nature experiences - just me and the sun, sand, surf, and my book. The beach also has the plus of being out in nature with less pollen and allergens to make me sneeze. Photo: Reading Agatha Christie at Abalone Cove Beach in Rancho Palos Verdes. (Credit: Bella Kim)
What’s the last great book you read?
Bella: “Stellarlune,” the ninth book in Shannon Messenger’s “Keeper of the Lost City” (KOTLC) series. I started off the new year with the highly anticipated, latest addition to one of my favorite fantasy series of all time. While KOTLC could be considered a lower level, childish read, I say, books are books. The story is more important to me, and judging by the number of my gasps and shouts of laughter while reading this book, it is clearly a great read. I finished the 728 pages in two days, a record time for me.
KOTLC has everything an awesome fantasy series needs: Relatable and lovable characters, witty rapport, awesome magic abilities and creatures, delicious-sounding imaginary foods, and whiplash-inducing plot twists and cliff hangers. Messenger makes the Lost Cities an enchanting, intricate world with places and people I wish so much actually existed. Her ninth book didn’t disappoint, and left me impatiently eager for the next volume.
What do you see as the most important environmental issue today?
Bella: Ocean pollution. The ocean occupies more surface area on the Earth than land, and it’s one of the most biodiverse and beautiful ecosystems on our planet. It saddens me to think of oil spills and garbage islands tainting the ocean and harming its plants and animals. We know less about the depths of the sea than we do about the surface of the moon, and we can’t discover more about it if it’s destroyed. Someday, I’d love to see the Great Barrier Reef, and I want to see it when the coral is healthy and the species are no longer endangered.
Photo above: Bolsa Chica State Beach, Bella’s favorite beach for swimming and boogie boarding. (Credit: Bella Kim)
What’s your favorite place to spend your free time in Los Angeles?
Bella: I could spend all day wandering The Last Bookstore. The crammed and crooked shelves give the first floor a cluttered, homier feel. It’s what I would want my dream home library to look like.
My favorite section is the YA corner at the back of the first floor, with teen-oriented mysteries, romances, and fantasies.
I also love the creative, eclectic art upstairs. On the way up, the names of different genres are painted on the steps, and you pass a display of books flying off their shelf. Also upstairs is the famous book arch and, for some reason, a sarcophagus and a picture of a very creepy-looking girl. The Last Bookstore is my favorite place in LA because it embodies everything magical I love about reading; it’s eccentric, but undeniably bookish.
Photo: The Last Bookstore’s first floor in LA. (Credit: Christine Lee)
Extra treat! “A Novel Philosophy,” by Bella Kim.
Bella wrote this essay for her freshman English class “This I Believe” assignment.
I waited for my Hogwarts letter when I turned eleven, fought monsters with demigods, ran with werewolves, wrote with Jo March, cried with Hazel Grace and Gus, sat in Maycomb’s courtroom, volunteered as tribute at the Reaping, felt infinite with Charlie, and walked Violet Vale with Anne. I defeated villains, solved mysteries, and traveled through time. Books symbolize page-filled gateways that admit those who let their imagination take over into lands of chapters and words. This I believe: Literature frees me to enter new worlds and make them my own.
People ask why I like to read. Schools turn reading into a chore and assignment, so they wonder, “Why do you enjoy something so boring and educational?” However, when teachers assign me reading, I think, It feels wonderful to get graded on work that I love. If forced to read a book I dislike, I find joy in reading what I want on my own. I choose fiction to escape into an unending world I can interpret myself.
Have you ever wanted to be anywhere but here? I believe in reading because it lets me be anywhere but here. I fall into whatever world I choose - Narnia, Panem, Olympus - simply by opening a book. When reading, I delve into a story with all my senses. Contrary to watching a movie, my mind can’t wander while I watch. I absorb the whole story when I immerse myself in a book. Readers exist as warriors, adventurers, and detectives; when they read stories, they live them.
I received the best gifts in the form of books. One Christmas, my aunt gave me her copy of The Writer’s Life. Inside, she wrote, “My personal copy of this special book of writerly insights - I hope it gives you guidance, inspiration, courage, and power - as it has done for me!” As a bibliophile, I understood the significance of receiving her personal copy. It represented a thoughtful gift of the highest order between bookworms. Similar to Harry receiving his father’s invisibility cloak, it signified a tool that someone I love and aspire to used on the path I wished to tread.
In the two days it took me to finish The Writer’s Life, it inspired me to create my own “writer’s life.” It inspired me to read poems and start “Morning Pages,” the tool in the book that liberates aspiring writers. As the new year started, I began writing three pages every morning I could, creating worlds of my own that others might someday fall into.
I believe in the power of words. I believe in losing oneself in a novel. I believe in shelves stacked with dusty volumes. I believe in lovingly creased pages and worn-out covers opened so often that their spines have cracked. I believe in reading one poem every day. I believe in the satisfaction of closing a finished book. This I believe: Reading opens your eyes, broadens your mind, and engages your heart.
Photo: Bella’s current to-read stack. (Credit: Bella Kim)