My Reading Story

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

Ever since I was in elementary school, I have had a strong fascination with literature. Overtime, I had a plethora of books lining my bookcases and barely had room for any more. Reading was a necessity to me and it still is to me today. I eat, sleep, and breath literature because I feel like it’s essential to my academic career. Literature does many wonderful things like, teach me about life lessons, transport me to a new world that I have only dreamed about going to, and discover new vocabulary.

Especially when I was sat at the dining table, cramming hundreds of word in my brain before the next day, the due date for every second grader to read a whopping total of a thousand words. Given we had a few months to do this, but even at a young age I practiced the art of procrastination. This happened frequently during elementary school years, me freaking out, frantically turning pages of book after book. Words turned to squiggles that just got tossed into the dump of useless knowledge in my brain, as I hastily glanced over the pages. Pages with sentences that stretched for miles, with seemingly no end. Sweat beading at my forehead and fingers trembling, the dining room getting smaller and smaller, with that gross old book smell filling the atmosphere, my mind seriously hurt and my eyes strained, whether it be from the mush of words getting shoved into my mind, or my mom scolding me as I tried to read. Something about how procrastinating throughout school would get me working at McDonald’s? I wasn’t sure. I just knew that I hated reading.

As a child, I read non-stop. I used to spend entire nights reading, so much so that by the age of 9, I had developed grey circles under my eyes, which I wore like a badge. In school, I would use every free second I had to get just a little closer to finishing whatever book I had on hand. Ms. Carpenter, who always seemed as though she didn’t like teaching very much, frequently yelled at me for keeping my books on my desk so I could get to them quicker whenever I finished my classwork. She insisted that they were a distraction. But I always had a book to read, because every Friday each class walked in a neat line

As a six-month-old baby books had opened up a whole entire new world of experience for me. My inspiration to learn how to read and write was encouraged by my Mother and Grandmother. This is because they read out loud to me before bed occasionally and gave me the best time of my life by introducing me to a library. By two years of age I developed speech and other communication skills. This helped me understand and develop a favorite book, “PJ Funny Bunny,” and I would stare at the pages pretending I was reading them. I would continually pretend to read with other Dr. Seuss books, Smurf pop-up books (I imagined I was a part of these for hours), sniff & scratches, and sensory books. I had just begun

When I was eight or nine years old, I decided I wanted to be a writer. By this age, I had already gone through the phases of wanting to be an artist, a cook, an astronaut and was extremely satisfied with my new choice of profession. After all, I loved to read so why not write? Reading was my true love: during second grade, I conquered all of Harry Potter over the course of two months. My mom’s rule was that I had to read the book before watching the movie, so I read and read. I would compete in, and win, all the school reading competitions as well as the summer library competitions. Writing, I decided, was the next natural step.

All writers have to develop a love for the written word at some point in their lives. For some the point is an exact point that they can pinpoint and for others they have loved literature for their entire lives. Eudora Welty was a semi-successful writer but her memoir is considered one of her better books. In an exert of her memoir, titled “One Writer’s Humble Beginnings”, she writes of how she loved books for as long as she can remember and her mother’s influence on that infatuation. In her memoir Eudora Welty writes of the impact of adult and especially parental figures on a child and uses rhetorical language in isolated scenes to convey that message.

Growing up I was a very avid reader. I remember the first books I successfully read by myself. They were a series directed towards preschoolers called, “Where’s Spot?” written by Eric Hill. There are over twenty books in the Spot series and I’m damn sure I read every single one of them. I would come home ever day after preschool and kindergarten and read the Spot books aloud as I was walking around the house. If you can’t already tell, I was a very self-absorbed child. And although the books are extremely simple, with about one word on each page, and any human being older than ten can probably tell you the exact plot simply based off of the title, I always prided myself in being able to read them. However, soon after I found reading to be a lot less rewarding because as most self-centered children I sought recognition for all my actions, as a dog seeks a treat for being able to do a trick. It became something I was expected to be able to do instead of something I was special for doing.

It may be cliché, but books have always held a spot close to my heart. When I was three I had a book called Bitsy Witch that went wherever I did. When I was seven, my mom read a chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone every night. In middle school, I worked my way through the entire children’s section at my local library. In high school, I took every English class offered, and when I entered college I to compromise with my family that I would also pursue a pre-professional program. My time outside of class was spent on my pre-professional degree until, my senior year in college. I took two classes that focused on children’s and young adult texts. Before those classes, I hadn’t realized that specializing in Children’s literature was

I embraced what it means to be a real reader at a young age. I didn’t merely read books, I LIVED books. My second grade teacher insisted her students write about their favorite books and why we chose that specific book. Easy peasy lemon squeezy Mrs. Laforte! Gazing down at the paper on my beloved cubby desk, the choice was clear: Dinosaurs Days by Joyce Milton. “I love this book because I love dinosaurs. I even have dinosaur toys!” (From an adorable little boy a.k.a. Bradley). It was around this time when I delved into solely fiction novels such as Narnia, which undoubtingly influenced how I viewed the world and its inhabitants. Nearly everyone daydreams when there is a certain lack of stimulation, but I’d bet I spent

One Christian man who utilized and clearly enjoyed literature—both of fiction entertainment and non-fiction—as a means of spreading the Christian worldview is C. S. Lewis. Lewis, though the joys of the sub-genre of fantasy, managed to create an entertaining story while also upholding and spreading the Christian worldview. One of his most famous works, The Chronicles of Narnia, is a series filled with magic and the impossible, but the entire series is riddled with allusions to the Bible, allusions that fell into place because of his Christian faith. The creation of Narnia (The Magician’s Nephew, Chapter 9) matches the account found in Genesis; the lion present throughout the series, Aslan, is similar to God and Christ, and the symbol of the

Reading was the new outlet for my imagination and the stories I read fascinated me. They weren’t too unlike the scripts of computer games or the own stories I came up with on my own, but books actually had the action and emotional aspects written out. And again, while my peers were reading things about growing up, things that had morals and would teach valuable lessons (I remember one book about a shoplifter who had to do community service at an animal shelter), I read real fiction: Jurassic Park, Dragonriders of Pern, Lord of the Rings… Stuff of fantasy and science-fiction that let my mind stray from reality. Stuff that kept my imagination alive while I was being forced to learn multiplication and the names of countries. Of course, my teachers encouraged me to keep reading, as long as I wasn’t doing the reading in the middle of their lectures. But it wasn’t because of their influence, however, that kept me interested in books. It was because I loved it. It put pictures into my head and made me think. So I kept reading. But even then I knew reading wasn’t enough… Yes, the stories were fascinating, but they weren’t what I wanted. Back then I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but as middle school came to a close, I found it.

Although reading literature when being forced and for educational purposes has withered my once love of reading, I can still vividly remember where my love of reading began. My comfy living room couch holds my

As a child, my interests were more focused on reading than writing. In elementary school I fell in love with books. Initially I read simple children’s books, much like everybody else in my class, but it did not take long for my passion to drive me to read more difficult writings. Fiction books quickly became a replacement for any childhood toys. Instead of blocks or stuffed animals I would ask my parents for books. Since they were aimed at young readers, they tended to be short. I found myself going through them within days, and then soon several hours. Towards the end of elementary school I was reading series like Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. I was captivated, and reading truly opened up a whole new world for me.