January 31st, 2010

How I Learned to Read

I am loving Kerry’s Family Literacy Week posts so much that I want to play. However, most of my knowledge of kidlit comes from when I *was* one, so I’ll be writing about that. My story actually fits in perfectly with the theme, since it’s about family and reading (also two of my favourite things).

All authors seem to have some seminal story about the moment they realized the words on the page made a story, and they could have that story, right then and there, by reading. You see such anecdotes in all the big bio interviews with writers, and they’re often tales of dweebish precociousness–“Oh, I couldn’t speak clearly or run without a helmet, but I was reading novellas by the time I was in kindergarten.” Or preschool. Or out of the womb.

My memory of the early years cuts in and out–I don’t think I’m missing much except a lot of apple-juice spills, but dates are distinctly sketchy. I know my mom taught me to read, and I can remember bits of the process, but I can’t exactly slot it into chronological time. I never asked about this, blithely assuming that I had been an early reader too–I certainly did well enough in the early grades, although some of those good marks may have been for not eating play dough (anyone who doesn’t retain a residual longing for play dough obviously somehow got hold of a can when no one was looking and *ate it all*, thus finally slaking that hunger all children experience).

Anyway! One day, and I think this might have actually been in support of an interview I was doing for *Once*, I asked my mom whether I too, had been a magically advanced, obvious-writer-to-be infant.

“Did I learn to read pretty early?”
“Oh, no, not really.”
“Like, only average?”
“I guess you were about…eight or so. I really had to push you, you didn’t want to learn.”

I was a single-digit illiterate! Oh, the shame! I finally managed to extract from my mother that I had in fact been able to read sentences in grade 1. But those were 40-word stories read aloud to the teacher, and my mom equated being “able to read” with being able to sit alone and turn pages, to immerse oneself in the story.

Which I had actually had no interest in doing, so readily available were adults to read to me. Of course I really liked stories, all stories (but especially those about plucky orphans or Laura Ingalls Wilder)–I just didn’t associate them with something I could do on my own. It’s funny, trying to remember the experience of learning to read now, because the sense I recall most from childhood reading now is physical–the feeling associated with reading is *snuggly*, because when I was read to I was held in someone’s lap, and when my mom began teaching me to read that’s where I remained.

I certainly watched television, and actually often with my parents, who liked to keep an eye on things. But I sat alone for that, or at least could. And playing outside or games or whatever (yes, I did occasionally go outside)–those could be independent, solo activities. But reading was interactive, intimate.

So when (apparently the summer after grade 2!) my mom said I was old enough to read chapter books, I had to start by reading the first page of each chapter of *Little House at Plum Creek* and *Charlotte’s Web* before she would read the rest to me. I do *not* recall a lightning bolt moment when the words became a story for me–I recall it being extremely hard and *dying* for my mom to take over. But it’s still a positive memory, and it is weird that I can recall exactly how my head fit under her chin and my legs sprawled on either side of her knees.

I am not at all suggesting that I was a lazy reader because I was read to too much–that might be impossible, I think. Of course, this is biased, but I am of the opinion that the way I learned to read was the best way possible. It was never a school subject for me, or any kind of subject at all. Reading was just a tool I could use to get at the best things in the world, stories–getting meaddicted to those was a far better goad to learning than any phonics book ever could be.

And by the time I started grade 3, I could read myself to sleep, and have been doing so ever since.

I like this topic, and would love to hear other reader-creation stories–how did you learn to read?

How I Learned to Read

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