Personal Narrative: My Experience With Reading

James Patterson perfectly sums up my lengthy, arduous, and ever-changing relationship with reading. "There is no such thing as a kid who hates reading. There are kids who love reading, and kids who are reading the wrong books." As I grow older, and come to appreciate the influence that words have over the human mind and soul, this quote resonates with me more deeply. The interpretation of words has had an immense impact over my life, and is something I will be forever indebted to.

In today’s society reading is essential to function. Everywhere people turn they are required to read directions, labels, books, what’s going on in the news, or mandatory rules they need to follow. Just think about if a majority of the world couldn’t read how chaotic society would be.

As kids we are exposed to many different thing in many different environments like reading and math in school, or swimming and music in someone's time spent away from school.

Reading has never been too difficult for me. As a child I was constantly reading something. I loved to read, but as I grew my passion for reading slowly began to die. My interest in life and my ideas changed the way I do things, and it unfortunately has changed the way I feel about reading.

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.

I still remember today what my middle school English teacher told me, “It is not the reading you hate, it is the books you are reading. You just need to find the type of books that you enjoy and then that is when reading will start to mean something more to you.” It took a while, but I eventually did find the type of books that I love. The first books that opened my eyes were the titles Beastly, The Twilight Saga, The Last Song, Uglies, and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. It opened a whole new world to me and I continued to find books that I thoroughly enjoyed- which I would have never imagined happening. Then one day, I stumbled upon First Date and Staring Me by Krista McGee and I fell in love. I read them at least ten times a piece. Every time I got a book project, and I got to choose the book, I choose one of those. If I got a book project with a new teacher and she did not know that I had already read those books, I would read them again. There were numerous times when my parents found out that I did not sleep at all the previous night because I stayed up reading. Do not get me wrong, they were glad I was reading, but they were not very enthused that I stayed up all night to read. This continued through high school when I began to adventure out to new authors, such as John Green, Steven Chbosky, and F. Scott

As a little girl my understanding of literacy began with the alphabet soup. I vaguely remember that my mom would place the soup in front of me and I move the letters with my finger attempting to form words. My mom sat with me and spelled my name out I was so excited because I was learning. From that moment on my curiosity for literacy began. When my mom took me to the store I would ask for books even though I couldn't read but the letters fascinated me. The pictures weren't bad either. My adventure with literacy continued as I began kindergarten.

One of my favorite and earliest memories of reading, is when my mom used to read to my little brother and I before bedtime when we were very young. My absolute favorite was Bears in the Night by Stan and Jan Bernstein. Eventually when I got older, a book a night was not satisfying me. Soon I read all the books on the book shelf. Spending hours in my room reading was my idea of “fun”. Going back to elementary school, I would check out about

“A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.” Mark Twain

As a kid I used to read a lot and my family use to read to me. Reading was my favorite thing to do, but as I got older I got out the habit of reading. I stopped reading because there were a lot of distractions, such as watching TV, and being on my cell phone all the time. Dr. Seuss once said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.” I absolutely love that quote it inspires me and motivates me so much. I have so many early reading memories, school reading memories, and some reading obstacles that I have had to overcome, all influencing my current approach to reading.

There are actually quite of few books that I have enjoyed reading, most of them being lower reading level sports books. Although I liked those books I could never bring myself to read them outside of school, that's just the type of relationship I have with reading. It’s not that I don’t like reading but if I’m not required to read something chances are I won’t. I do think as I’m getting

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 had a place in my life from a young age with two young working parents putting themselves through school, books often kept me busy and quiet. When I started elementary school it took me longer to develop my reading skills if it wasn’t for my favorite book series Amelia Beldia I don’t think I ever would have caught up. The moment I fell in love with reading I was in second grade on a school night I stayed up all night reading a long book about animals. I even woke up my parents at 4 am to tell them how proud I was of myself. Reading in a classroom setting is difficult for me when I'm not interested in the story. The proficiency tests throughout the years k-5th where the worst. Terrible short stories about potato farming, bird flight patterns were not interesting enough to keep my hyperactive mind on track. Against all odds, I was able to focus and graduate

My earliest experience with reading and writing were traumatizing especially when I was in the first grade. I still recall the experience I went through to this day. It made me really hate myself because the other kids were making fun of me.

My earliest memories of reading start when my mom sent me to Christians studying school at six years old and the mentor would read out a handbook on heroes