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

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I can't remember not being able to read. I CAN remember not being able to WRITE, and being SO FRUSTRATED. Because I'd TRY to write something, and then I'd try to read what I wrote, and it wouldn't be words, and I couldn't figure out why.

My father says that I learned to read partially on the Chronicles of Narnia, that he'd read me a chapter at night, and I got to do the one-letter words, "I" and "a", and then I got to do two-letter words. And then he'd just fall asleep at interesting parts and I'd have to read it myself if I wanted to keep going.

He clarifies that that last part wasn't on purpose. It was just that he'd fall asleep. But it worked anyway.

[jazzfish]

I have literally no memory of learning to write. I mean, other than painful recollections of handwriting homework in early elementary school. I was learning to type (not in a Mavis-Beacon way, just as a result of having a computer in the house and playing Adventure) pretty soon after I learned to read, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Ha! That's a pretty great way to learn / teach yourself to read.