My Reading History

I have always loved words. I remember being in nursery school, sitting at home one night, and asking my parents over and over how to spell different family member's names so I could write them down. (I had a lot of trouble with the "S" in Steve at that point.) I don't remember this, but my parents say I also used to collect things around the house with words on them, like the mail, and take it to bed with me. And there are plenty of pictures of me sleeping with Baldy (my stuffed dog), surrounded by books and junk mail.

Interestingly enough, I didn't start to read on my own until kindergarten. People would try to teach me to read, and I refused to learn. This was because I loved for people to read to me, and I was afraid if I could read myself, they would stop reading aloud to me. I think the final straw for me was that my sister Leslie would chose Good Night Moon every night as her bedtime story. That book is boring! I always hated it. So I had to learn to read so I could do something more fun during Good Night Moon.

Once I did start to read on my own, nothing could hold me back. I jumped from not reading to Laura Ingalls Wilder. I've never understood this push for kids to read "chapter" books. What's that all about? Are second graders still reading picture books?

I also read fast. I was always the first kid finished with tests in school, simply because I read the questions faster. Sometimes after we finished tests, we weren't allowed to read anything else or do anything other than sit at our desks, so I made a whole little town out of erasers (the ones shaped like cartoon characters) in my desk to play with while I waited for everyone else to finish. My dad made a rule that when he took us to the library, I wasn't allowed to start reading the books in the car on the way home. Because then I'd be finished with all of them before the weekend was even over.