“Children are made readers on the laps of their
parents.” (Emilie Buchwald). That was most certainly true of me. I loved it
when people would read to me. I would sit in my mother’s lap as a small child
for hours on end, begging her to read just one more story. Just one more page,
one more paragraph. My entire world was made of stories. When my friends would
play dolls and dress-up, I would imagine myself to be Simba and Bambi and Boo, characters that I learned not
because of the movies they appeared in, but because of the books that
accompanied them. They filled my childhood with wonder and excitement.
It wasn’t until I was five or six years old that I
truly began to understand that stories weren’t just something you tell or listen to; stories come to life through words. Suddenly, words
became magical to me. The letters I learned in school—the sounds they made, the
way you can put them together—suddenly took on an entire new meaning to me. All
I ever wanted in the whole world was right in front of me. All I had to do was
reach for it!
And that’s where the trouble commenced. At six years
old, I knew exactly what I wanted. I understood well enough that I wanted to read. I spent countless hours
shedding devastated tears. I knew it could
work, but I didn’t have the knowledge to make it work. It didn’t help that I had so little patience. I knew exactly what I wanted, and I was keenly
aware that I simply wasn’t able to have it.
I was bored to tears with the things I was able to
read, and not yet able to read the things that interested me. The books I
hopelessly stumbled through had no meaning. I didn’t want to read about a cat who had yarn. I couldn’t have cared less
that Pam had some jam or that Ted had a red bed. I wanted a story, not a bunch of words that had no
meaning. I longed for the adventure contained in the books my mother read to
me.
By the time I was seven years old, I had given up hope
of ever reading anything worth something. The subjects I once loved—history,
science, and literature—not longer interested me. The things that once held me
captive no longer did. If I couldn’t learn those things on my own, I saw no
point in having them taught to me.
One day, I came home from Sunday school with a smile
on my face and quite the haughty heart. “They’re doing a contest, Momma, and
I’m going to win it.” My mother, who hadn’t heard about the contest, was
somewhat concerned as I began to describe to her what the contest entailed. “In
the summer, they’re going to see who can read the most books. If you read some,
you get a prize. But Momma, if you
read fifty books, you get a really cool prize. And I’m going to win it!”
Much later, my mother admitted to being absolutely
certain that there was no way I could
manage that. But she did her best to help me anyway. That summer, I read
through every Watch Out for Joel book,
every Cul-de-sac Kids book, and every
Magic Tree House book I could get my
fingers on. I read daily. Before I knew it, the summer was over, and in those
three short months, I had grown to love what I had begun to hate. I had read fifty-four books a single summer. I had
done it. I had learned to read.
I finally understood the beauty in words. I knew that
people could put letters together to make words and the words made sentences,
and if you could string the sentences together just right, you could make
stories. It was quite the revelation to me at seven years old. “Literacy is one
of the greatest gifts a person could receive.” (Jen Selinsky) This statement
means all the more to me because of the struggle I went through to obtain it. Looking back, I see now that if it had come
easily and naturally to me, I wouldn’t see the beauty in it that I am so
blessed to see today.
No comments:
Post a Comment