whence book-learning?
Aug. 29th, 2016 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishInspired by a post by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nineweaving sometime last week:
How did y'all learn to read? Did you teach yourselves, or learn in school, or what?
I don't know how I learned to read. My parents (mother?) must have read picture books to me. I know that one day when I was three or four, I picked up Go Dog Go in the store and said "I want this one!" My mother said "Are you going to read it yourself?" Her tone implied that if I said no I wasn't getting the book, so of course I said "Yes." And I took it home and laid down on the floor and read it, and didn't realise what I'd done until I was through.
From there the next things I can recall reading were the Mr Men / Little Miss books, and then a Hardy Boys book (The Mystery of the Chinese Junk) that my great-Aunt Celia sent me, and then some Greek and Norse myths out of a collection on the landing, and then Tolkien, over four or five years and three houses. There must have been other things I read on my own in there, but they didn't really make an impression. I distinctly recall the bookcase on the landing, and I *think* that means it was in the townhouse in Leavenworth (first grade) rather than the house in Fairfax (second thru fourth grades).
And after Tolkien came other brightly-spined Darrell-K-Sweet-covered Del Rey paperbacks, and Pop Shackelford's copy of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, leading in a more or less direct line to the well-adjusted young man I am today.
nineweaving sometime last week:How did y'all learn to read? Did you teach yourselves, or learn in school, or what?
I don't know how I learned to read. My parents (mother?) must have read picture books to me. I know that one day when I was three or four, I picked up Go Dog Go in the store and said "I want this one!" My mother said "Are you going to read it yourself?" Her tone implied that if I said no I wasn't getting the book, so of course I said "Yes." And I took it home and laid down on the floor and read it, and didn't realise what I'd done until I was through.
From there the next things I can recall reading were the Mr Men / Little Miss books, and then a Hardy Boys book (The Mystery of the Chinese Junk) that my great-Aunt Celia sent me, and then some Greek and Norse myths out of a collection on the landing, and then Tolkien, over four or five years and three houses. There must have been other things I read on my own in there, but they didn't really make an impression. I distinctly recall the bookcase on the landing, and I *think* that means it was in the townhouse in Leavenworth (first grade) rather than the house in Fairfax (second thru fourth grades).
And after Tolkien came other brightly-spined Darrell-K-Sweet-covered Del Rey paperbacks, and Pop Shackelford's copy of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, leading in a more or less direct line to the well-adjusted young man I am today.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-30 08:26 pm (UTC)When I started kindergarten (in my day there wasn't much, if any, preschool), my mother told the principal that I could read, and he pooh-poohed her: "All parents think their kids can read." He called her a few weeks later to tell her in astonished tones that her daughter could read.
To this day, I think it is the only activity aside from breathing that I have engaged in effectively every day of my life since I started more than 60 years ago.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-30 09:30 pm (UTC)To this day, I think it is the only activity aside from breathing that I have engaged in effectively every day of my life since I started more than 60 years ago.
*blink* For me as well. Certainly the only cognitive (as opposed to physical) activity. I hadn't thought about it like that, but yeah. The idea of not reading is ... kind of terrifying, actually.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-30 10:05 pm (UTC)Back in perhaps the '90s, there was a (mostly non-internet) meme going around that was "would you rather give up reading or sex?" Now, I'm quite fond of sex, but I realized I could imagine giving it up, while like you, I am scared at the thought of not reading.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-30 10:22 pm (UTC)*nervous laugh* Exactly.