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

[reedrover]

Interesting! I remember a lot of Mrs. PiggleWiggle and Amelia Bedilia, then Encyclopedia Brown and Little Women/Men/Boys.

I don't remember not being able to read. I have been told numerous times by my family that I was reading at four years old. I had memorized Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now both forward and backward by the middle of kindergarten. Likewise, I don't remember not being able to write. I remember learning cursive very early on in my elementary school years because I wanted to sign my name like Dad did. So my early handwriting looked textbook straight up and down until it came to my name, which was slanty and precisely-loopy like Dad's.

[jazzfish]

At this point I can come up with things that I must have read... but many of then are obviously things from fourth grade or later. Memory like a steel whatchamacallit.

And I don't remember not being able to read, either. I do remember being taught letters in kindergarten (the inflatable Mr. R had a hole) and some reading-aloud in I guess first or second grade, and thinking that these were kind of weird things since I was already past them but maybe there was some secret knowledge I was missing. (Spoiler: there wasn't, except for the knowledge that being ahead of the class doesn't mean you learn any more, it just means you'll get in trouble for being bored. NOT THAT I'M AT ALL BITTER.)

[reedrover]

I know you know this already: I grew up in a different reality. When our half-day kindergarten teacher realized a bunch of us could read, she volunteered to teach for another two hours for just the readers. My parents enthusiastically encouraged reading. Etc.