whence book-learning?

[jazzfish]

Inspired by a post by 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.

Comments

[wohali]

My memory of learning to speak and read is weird.

I know from family folklore and from an innate sense of truth that I didn't speak words much until I was able to speak in full sentences, and then once I could speak in full sentences, it was hard to shut me up. :)

Then came reading. I remember my father painted up large signs, bigger than 11x17, each with a red word on it in lowercase Helvetica. He'd stand across the room and hold them up over his head and I had to read the word. I then graduated to the McGuffey readers, which I worked through before even heading to nursery (aka pre-K). I was an accelerated student and ended up in grade 1 instead of kindergarten, and there the approach (mid-70s) was a combination of phonics and books. Favourites included the Velveteen Rabbit, Beatrix Potter, various Dr. Seuss titles, and Grimm's Fairy Tales. I would try to read on my own as much as I could, but reading a book at bedtime with my mother was a common practice. My parents quickly put a half-size bookshelf into my room so I'd have access to books any time I wanted.

I remember huge fights with my mother over the Scholastic book orders that came through the school. She felt the books weren't up to literary standards and often prevented me from ordering books on those grounds. I countered with the lie that our teacher "ordered" us to order 2 books from each order form and was grading us on reading them completely. She eventually caught on, but I managed to get a half-dozen or so books that way.

[jazzfish]

I can certainly understand not wanting to speak until you can actually communicate. :)

O yes, definitely Beatrix Potter and Grimm's and Seuss (et al), and Winnie-the-Pooh as well. But I associate those all with having them read *to* me, somehow, or maybe reading them along with my mother.

Book orders! On super-flimsy paper where if you decided you wanted to change your mind and get something else, you had to be VERY CAREFUL with erasing the "1" in the quantity column or you'd tear the whole thing apart. I remember those, very clearly. That must have been when I started reading Ruth Chew, as well.

[wohali]

Nearly all of my Scholastic book orders would have been either Choose Your Own Adventure books, or things like Basic Fun.