How I Became a Reader

[deborahjross]

Over on the Book View Cafe blog, sartorias describes her journey as a "passionate reader" (her phrase). She writes how a babysitter brought over a book that ignited that passion:
The story was everything I wanted: kids with no parents, girls getting to adventure as much as boys, no drippy patriotic or moral message in that inimical fifties way of “do what I say, but if you do what I do you’ll be in trouble,” funny stuff as well as action.

I suppose every one of us who loves books has a story. Here are some tidbits from mine. I'd love to hear yours, as well.

I am of an age when kids were expected to learn to read at school, usually in 2nd grade or so. Also, for some reason, I never went to kindergarten (and no one I knew went to preschool, not that my family could have afforded it). I got dumped into first grade with no prior school experience and spent the next couple of years absolutely confused. Reading was opaque to me. I remember struggling with the word "laugh." I just could not translate those letters into anything like a familiar word.

Then in the summer between 2nd and 3rd grades, I was given a discarded reader (3rd grade, I think). I remember the brightly colored pictures and stories I wanted to gobble up. The fairy tale about the hill of glass, and excerpts from books like Understood Betsy (the chapter where she and Molly get left behind at the fair and have to make their way home). These memories are mixed with the rocking chair in which I sat and the sun streaming through my bedroom window. I learned to read that summer because reading gave me entry into wonderful worlds, places I wanted to be, and people I wanted to know more about. I dove into the books on my own shelves. I think that by the time I entered 3rd grade, I was reading and a 5th or 6th grade level.

So what did I read in 5th and 6th grade?

Anything I could get my hands on!

By this time, I was checking out library books and snatching books from the shelves of the classrooms. I read Black Beauty and Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island and Stuart Little and Dr. Seuss. And anything with horses or dogs in it: The Black Stallion and the Albert Payson Terhune books featuring collies (Lassie -- the original version with Roddy MacDowell -- was very popular). It wasn't until high school that I tackled Crime and Punishment and then discovered Andre Norton, my gateway drug into fantasy and science fiction.

I don't remember how I came by that reader, but I am so grateful to whoever it was.

How and when did you fall in love with books?

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

A lovely reminiscence!

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It sounds like boasting, but I learned to read when I was 2. But I couldn't talk yet, for on that I was very slow. It wasn't books that initially attracted my attention, it was that I'd figured out that letters were a kind of code, and I wanted desperately to learn that code, and kept pointing at things like street signs and saying "Gah!" until my mother told me what each letter was. (I couldn't talk, but I did understand spoken language.)

But falling in love with books ... A few years back I was in an open discussion at a con about favorite childhood books, and everyone was naming books intended for readers of 8 to 15, somewhere in that range. When it was my turn, I said, "Well, what about picture books?" My first favorite author was P.D. Eastman, author of Go Dog Go! and Are You My Mother? Loved those books (and a lot of Dr. Seuss too), read them over and over. That began a lifelong career of re-reading more than tackling new books.

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

Not boasting at all. Some kids are ready to read by 2. I was 2 back in the late 1940s, when there were far fewer books to motivate kids, and the prevailing sentiment was that kids should be taught only by trained teachers. Thank goodness your mom didn't say, "I'm not qualified to tell you what those letters are"! (If you know Monty Python, you'll get the "qualified" reference.)

Next generation, my own kids learned to read in their own time and way. In kindergarten, my oldest came up with a fun game, reading backwards. She was so proud that she could recognize words regardless of order, until the teacher told her that was not allowed. Grrr....

And both mine loved Eastman and the Berenstain Bears, too.