Descriptive Essay - Unconventional Experience

Since I have lived in multiple locations as a child and teenager, I had to think about what place to consider as my hometown. I was born in the crazy world of Hollywood, California, although I did not live there for very long. I also lived in other cities while growing up, and chose just one to focus on, San Dimas. Since I had several painful experiences while residing there, I was never crazy about living in San Dimas, for I lived in an area where several people were cruel to me. They would call me names, throw objects at me and threaten to harm me physically. This occurred in my neighborhood and at school. Luckily, I had a small group of friends with whom I explored the city and the surrounding hills nearby. We would hike and find old mines,

Thanks to hours and hours of bedtime stories, I was able to read from the age of 3. In kindergarten I read to my classmates, and by second grade I was reading series like The Boxcar Children and Trixie Belden. Books allowed me to get lost in other worlds full of adventure and excitement. My love for what words can do has extended through high school. I pride myself on my book collection, anything from Hunger Games to The Picture of Dorian Gray. I’ve continued to read all the way through high school, some books four or five times because I love them so much.

As a kid, I was always really shy and spent much of my free time reading books. In 4th grade, the teacher required that each month we read a certain amount of short stories or books and write a summary for each. I always completed the minimum requirement and read plenty extra books. Throughout the year, I always had the most stars next to my name for top reader, not because I wanted to collect as many gold stars as I could, but because I really enjoyed reading. I had my eyes glued to a book even when I was at home. I

My interest in reading started at an early age, before kindergarten. I have my mom to thank for reading a book or two to me at night before bed. My mom has told me that because she was a stay at home mom before I started school, it was her main goal to teach me as much as she could by herself, before any teachers had the chance to, and that included reading a couple children’s books to me every night. My grandpa had a hand in this too; he bought me a Dick and Jane storybook and before long, I had the entire book read by myself.

My love of reading blossomed when I was a child, because my parents showed me how wonderful reading is. There were countless nights when I remember myself as a little girl refusing to go to sleep before ‘tucking dad into bed’ by reading him a picture book. Not only did I uphold that tradition though, but my mother is a preschool teacher, so she gets really into reading out loud, and she would help me read books such as The Boxcar Children set, The Secret of NIMH and The Chronicles of Narnia weekly until I didn’t need help anymore.

    As a child I was a very eager learner, I always wanted to learn new things to feed my brain. My desire to learn how to read started when I was introduced to the book, “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” Since I didn't have the ability to read at that age, I would ask my mom to

Growing up as a child, I was different from the rest of the kids in my current community. I grew up in a tiny religious dot, barely recognizably on a map; West Union, Ohio. I moved to Cincinnati shortly before my first grade year, but I can visually account for many memories that were created during my first portion of life in West Union.

Mount Zion, Washington, located just north of Rock Island, where the winters were cold, the summers were hot and, if you were lucky enough to live near one of its many orchards, the air was rich with the perfume of apple blossoms. It was a town full of remarkably colorful people, however, most coasted through small town life under the radar for various reasons. If you have ever lived in a speck-on-the-map town with a neon city only minutes away, you may have a good idea of what it is like when everyone knows everything about everyone, while, at the same time, your neighbor could pass away and never have existed at all. Thankfully I do not, nor have I ever lived in Mount Zion, Washington.

If there were one thing that shapes my identity the most, it would be my home. For most of my twenty year existence, I lived a fairly comfortable life in the sleepy town of West Salem, Wisconsin. It was the type of town where

New Richland, Minnesota is the little back-country town that I grew up in. My family moved to New Richland when I was ten, and I lived there until I graduated High School. Folks from my hometown loved spending time out on the nearby lake, cheering on the High School sports teams, eating out at the local bar, and going drinking every weekend. The older I grew I realized that those activities did not amuse me in the slightest. That is why when I graduated High School I moved far away and never looked

The only time I did read was when I had to, but then the idea of reading changed. The accelerated reading program made reading fun and also a challenge, and not in the terms of difficulty, but for the chance to be competitive. With this program you received points by the grade you scored on the exams and the difficulty of the books you chose to read, and as a little elementary peer I wanted the highest score you could possibly get and the most points. This brought a whole new aspect to reading for me that I had never experienced before. Reading became fun and I loved it. I strived to read more books that were of greater difficulty and this challenged my mind to comprehend them. I believe that I truly gained my love for reading at this point in my childhood, by diving into reading material out of my comfort

Located in Silver Creek, Nebraska, the house that belonged to my grandmother became my second home. Silver Creek is a small town found along highway 30 between Central City and Columbus, and it was about an hour drive from Grand Island. This is the town where my mother grew up and where she taught for many years and I went to school before we made the transition to Aurora when I was in the fourth grade. Rather than spend two hours commuting every day, we would often spend the night at my grandmother’s house once or twice a week. This is where I slid down the banister of the basement stairs and where I broke my toe trying to do a karate kick. Being such a small town, Silver Creek gave its residents a strong sense of community, and no matter where you were in the town, the chances that you would see someone you knew were very high. There were fewer people my age there with only nine other students in my grade in school, but we were much closer together. It was extremely rare to go somewhere in town and not see someone you knew. Rather than being forced to entertain myself like I did in Grand Island, I was able to spend more time with others around my age because they were never more than a few blocks

Growing up in small town makes trying to figure out you’re purpose in life in my opinion, a little harder. It makes it very difficult to break away from the small town roots that you grew up knowing. I grew up in a small town named Helenwood, Tennessee, to me, the greatest place on earth. Others would definitely disagree with me and I’m well aware of that, but I consider this place like a Garden of Eden. Helenwood is a tiny town on the outskirts of East Tennessee. Here, everyone knows just about everyone, you attend church every time the doors are open and ride the dirt roads on the weekend. Being from a small town very much shaped whom I grew up to be and for that I will be forever grateful.

Reading has been one of my favorite hobbies since I was a little child. I grew up as a normal child should grow and eventually I had to start learning for me to fit in society. My literacy started many years ago, after I knew how to talk and communicate with people. Reading my alphabet was quite stressful and I had to be given a hand by my family members. I remember my parents reading with me and it was the most meaningful and memorable way to spend time with me. This is because I liked reading a lot and I was eager to learn so that I could fit in with my older siblings. My favorite books were storybooks taking about adventures and fairytales

Reading is something that is taught to everyone in their early childhood, the time I learned to read I was very fond of books. I loved to read novels to myself and to read them out loud to my sister. I like reading action, thriller, historical fiction, and mystery. During my early childhood we would have challenges of reading such as wrapped up and reading, golden dragon. These were reading challenges for students to read 20-25 specific grade novels during the school year and at the end you got a party if you read at least 5-10. I used to love reading and at that time I would read at least 20 books because I wanted to go to the party and win something with the lottery tickets I got. My childhood was fulI of reading, even if I read because I was greedy and I read because of the party, it still improved my reading level. As I grew and grew my reading