Personal Level As A Child

Harry Potter, Junie B. Jones, Narnia, Lemony Snicket, Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings, Goosebumps, Magic Tree House, and the Boxcar Children: Popular book series that most kids get into. I never did. Ever since school required mandatory reading, I perceived books as hassles. School effectively turned me off of reading for pleasure. Going into middle school, where students have regular book reports and summer reading, I faced a challenge. To make it by I had to learn to live with books, as they played an integral part to my career as a student. However, my current state of mind labeled reading a hassle and wanted nothing to do with it, necessitating change. Transitioning from elementary to middle school, I matured both physically and intellectually.

I have always had an unusual relationship with books. I went to a Hawaiian immersion school where instruction was solely delivered through the Hawaiian language all throughout elementary. All of my teachers from kindergarten to fourth grade designated time after lunch for reading. We would gather around and the teacher would proceed to read Hawaiian books. Everything from common books that had been translated from English such as “Harold and the Purple Crayon” to Hawaiian legends. We would also visit the school library once a week where our librarian would give us a quick read before allowing us to go off and borrow books. I never particularly enjoyed reading, but I didn't hate it either; I was indifferent about them.

From elementary school to high school the interest of reading didn’t change much. In elementary school the only books I liked to read were the ones with a lot of pictures in it. Trying to read when I was younger was like pulling teeth. I never wanted to do it. When I got to middle school and high school, I had to force myself to read. A couple of books I did enjoy reading were “Night” by Elie Wiesel and “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The reason why I enjoyed reading these books was because both authors put a lot of details in their stories. These stories helped my mind to capture the image of the characters’ lives and what they have experienced.

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

Do you love to read? If so, Would you love to read even if you were required to analyze, memorize, and study all of the material inside of your book? Now what if you had to do all that and you were only six? I understand that some people really enjoy digging deeper to get a much better understanding of a book. I also accept that in high school, students should be required to read and understand certain aspects of literature. However, when analytical reading is forced upon young children, I find that it can turn children away from enjoying to read. Beginning as a kid who loved to read, at a time when reading should be fun and enjoyable, the required nature of school reading almost turned me away from books forever.

I was assigned daily in my classes many reading assignments. But I was still going through the stage in not wanting to read. Although, I despised reading, having low grades were unacceptable to me. I had no choice but to read. Although, I can admit, many of the short stories, books, and articles I was assigned were very interesting. I learned a lot from non-fiction articles. When I was a sophomore in high school, I had a wonderful English teacher named Mrs. Shoffner. She recommended the class to check out a book in the library every 2 weeks to gain reading skills. As I entered the library I did not know where to begin nor what book I wanted to read. I went to the war books section because there is one thing I love enjoying to read and that would be books that deal with the world wars and diaries of people and the suffering they went through. I checked out a book called Milkweed. A book based on the pain and suffering the Jews went through in world war two. This book has been and will forever be my favorite book. I can read it over and over and never get tired of reading

Books were my best friend as a young adolescent and when I say “Best Friend” I mean so in a literal sense. I will not go into the specifics, most of it was quite boring I assure you. I attended a very small school, in an even quainter town, so I could probably count the number of people I knew and actively spoke to on a regular basis on both hands. I was a bit of a peculiar child, I was always a little too weird, or a little too quiet for the other twelve children in my grade’s taste. Consequently, as one could imagine, I didn’t exactly have people lining up around the corner

Reading became my escape, I read every book in English I could get my hands on, whether it was a forbidden John Grisham book my father left out, or an innocent children’s book such as The Secret Garden. The books allowed me to fly to my own world where I could be anything but a kid stuck away from home. Eventually I read through every fiction book there was in the house, so, I moved on to the less interesting educational books. Immediately, I fell in love, history books took me back to a time before mankind, or to the underground railroad! The math books had better puzzles than any of the mystery novels I had read, the science books answered more than my parents ever could! I felt like my world had been transformed overnight, nothing was(and still is) more exciting than the feeling of learning a new concept, or figuring out a difficult math puzzle. After almost a year of not attending school, I felt like like crying at the prospect of learning something new.

I never really had a chance to connect with books and reading on a very personal level as a child. They always seemed impractical to me: mainly fiction books. Don’t get me wrong or anything. I kind of got the idea of why students were made to read fiction books in school: to help increase empathy, vocabulary, and imagination, but I never really go into it. My family never enforced reading for me as strictly as other kids parents did for them, but emphasized the concrete skills. This inevitably led me to be mainly interested in the hard skills verse the more abstract soft skills. Out of this reasoning, I decided not to read books of the type throughout elementary, middle, and high school. I didn’t hate them or anything. I just didn’t have them in my tunnel vision. So guess I should of read more non-fiction then? Which, I did. But not as much as you would have thought I should have. My reasoning around this was that the schools would teach me those hard skills I crave so dearly. Plus, I would have more free time on my hands to find a more passive form of entertainment such as TV, movies, and thinking. Of the three I mainly enjoyed, the thinking activity where I would just sit down, be it on the bus, car, or bed and think about the scientific theories behind everything, which I was always wrong about. But it was the thoughts that counted: the expansion of the mind that really caught my attention. So in order to give you the full

Sometimes, reality sucks. Sometimes, I just don’t want to deal with school, and the stress and homework that accompanies it. Sometimes, I just don’t want to deal with my family about matters that we argue on. Sometimes, I just don’t want to deal with my friends after we had a rough conversation or something upsetting happened. Sometimes, I just don’t want to deal with anyone and anything. Sometimes, I just want a place I can escape to, where anything is possible, where I can be someone else and reading offers me that ability. I have loved reading, ever since I could learn how to read. I love reading because it is an escape from reality, it is fun and teaches me things about myself.

Throughout my time as a reader, I’ve been shaped by fictional stories and books. The best example that I can remember is reading the Magic Tree House series in elementary school. During elementary school, teachers would read to students as a way of teaching English, teaching about the world and teaching the consequences of actions. I enjoyed class time that had to do with reading, but having started reading simple books when I was 2, I definitely wanted to learn more. Near the end of elementary school, I was reading whenever I had the chance, and it just so happened that I found the fantasy book section. The Magic Tree House series inspired me to read even more because rather than short stories about karma, the Magic Tree House books focused on history, fantasy and problem solving.

My life has always involved reading. Some of my earliest and happiest memories involve books, and my life today has been largely affected by reading, from when I first started out to present day. The first time I can remember reading was when I was about four years old. I remember looking through one of my mom’s medical books and learning how to read through Dick and Jane books, but my most vivid memory is of reading the American Girl books. I used to read them with my mom every night before I went to bed, and one of my most exciting childhood memories was reading an entire Addy book in one night.

For as long as I can remember I have loved reading. When I was younger I would read just about anything I could get my hands on. Cereal boxes, shampoo bottles, just about anything. Reading was my favorite past time and no one was more thrilled than my parents, who took it upon themselves to brag to everyone that I loved to read. As I got older, however, I became less interested in reading. The books assigned to us in school were terribly boring and they successfully ruined reading for me. They made my once favorite pastime seem like a chore and I was convinced I would never love reading like I used to.

For as long as I can remember I have loved reading. When I was younger I would read just about anything I could get my hands on. Cereal boxes, shampoo bottles, just about anything. Reading was my favorite past time and no one was more thrilled than my parents, who took it upon themselves to brag to everyone that I loved to read. As I got older, however, I became less enthused about reading. The books assigned to us in school were terribly boring and they successfully ruined reading for me. They made my once favorite pastime seem like a chore and I was convinced I would never love reading like I used to.

I no longer get caught up in a story for hours on end. I haven't read a book purely for my own enjoyment since the seventh grade. In the past I found reading to be so calming and blissful, but when it became required to read for school I got burned out on it. The only person in my family who enjoys reading now is my mom. I believe that forcing kids to read builds a strong dislike of the hobby in students, or at least it did for me. School has greatly influenced me as a reader, it has taught me to be more efficient in my reading and to pay more attention to detail. The positive influences of school, however, are greatly outnumbered by the negatives: I no longer enjoy it, I don't have time for reading with all of my other schoolwork, and it's more of a chore now than a hobby. Personally my biggest challenge when it comes to reading is finding the time for it. I tend to procrastinate on my assignments and I often run out of time to