Here at Scholastic, we believe that books have the power to change lives, so I’m sure you’ve heard us talk about Bookprints: a list of the five books that have left an indelible mark on our lives, shaping who we are and who we become. In support of our global literacy campaign, Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life., and to help increase awareness about why books and reading are important, hundreds of famous reading role models have shared their Bookprints, inspiring others across the world to do the same. Just earlier this week, Megan posted an awesome story about a teacher who used the celebrity Bookprints featured on our site as the springboard for a creative project of her own.

I love the idea of a Bookprint, but I’ve always struggled with narrowing down my list of most influential books to five. Then I came across a fantastic article from Brain Pickings about My Ideal Bookshelf, a collection of portraits of famous creators by artist and illustrator Jane Mount. But these aren’t your ordinary portraits: they’re “portraits of people through the spines of their bookshelves…. a kind of book spine poetry of identity.” Or, in other words, a Bookprint.

Inspired by My Ideal Bookshelf, I decided to poll my fellow OOMers, many of whom have already given serious thought to the five books that make up their Bookprint, and ask them which books they’d include on their ideal bookshelves. Sadly, I can’t paint, so instead of beautiful illustrations in the style of Jane Mount, I’ve created a lovely collection of bullet points:

Lauren explains that her ideal bookshelf would be a mix of the books she devoured as a child that encouraged her love of reading, the books that inspired her to stretch her imagination and have great adventures, and the books that had characters she related to and who had the words to express the feelings and thoughts she couldn’t. (Well put!) The books of Lauren’s ideal shelf:

• Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann
• The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney
• I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
• The Pain and the Great One by Judy Blume
• The Pact by Jodi Picoult
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
• Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
• The Baby-sitters Club Super Special #7: Snowbound by Ann M. Martin
• Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles
• Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alfred Schwartz
• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Alex’s ideal bookshelf would be stacked with the Shel Silverstein books that her mom used to read to her on a daily basis, as well as suspenseful stories of survival. In coming up with titles for her ideal bookshelf, Alex noted that to this day, her parents still keep some of these books on the coffee table. Perhaps there’s something about our Bookprints that are destined to overlap with those closest to us.

• The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
• Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
• A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
• Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel

For her ideal bookshelf, Megan gravitates toward works by imaginative writers and poets. She’s deeply influenced by each author’s writing style, and included several stories about sisterhood and siblings:

• Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
• Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
• God of Small Things by Arundati Roy
• The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams
• The Best American Short Stories (collection from any year)
• The Wellspring by Sharon Olds
• The Wild Irish by Louise Gluck
• My Life in France by Julia Child
• The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

I feel like my ideal bookshelf is constantly evolving, but I can safely say that many of the following books would be permanent fixtures. Like my fellow OOMers, they’re a mixture of childhood favorites, titles that shaped me throughout elementary, middle, and high school, the novels I refuse to put in storage after college, and the books that have shaped me in between and inspired me to write:

• Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
• Jack in the Green by Allen Atkinson
• Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
• Kristy’s Great Idea by Ann M. Martin
• Bailey’s Window by Anne Lindbergh
• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
• Matilda by Roald Dahl
• The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
• The Velvet Room by Zilpha Snyder
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
• On Beauty by Zadie Smith
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• The Pillars of the Earth  by Ken Follett
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Image via Scott Jackson