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.
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Date: 2016-08-30 10:26 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2016-08-31 07:28 pm (UTC)