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: 2016-08-31 12:09 am (UTC)My in-laws were one of a very small number of Jewish families in Dubuque, Iowa. The neighbors, who were, like four-fifths of Dubuque, Catholic, had a huge family, and were the go-to babysitters for Lis, because they felt that the difference between eleven kids and twelve kids was trivial, so she spent a fair bit of time there when her parents were working.
And they didn't really believe that she ACTUALLY could read, rather than just memorizing the words in the book (which, to be fair, is a perfectly legitimate step on the road to reading). So they tried her on the book which they absolutely KNEW she wouldn't have seen before: the New Testament.
She had trouble with some of the big words, like "heaven", "hallowed", and "daily", and "trespasses" was a complete non-starter, but she got "our Father who art in" and "bread" just fine.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-01 04:08 am (UTC)